Patient expectations for a multimodal pain rehabilitation programme: active participation and coping skills. A qualitative study.

PURPOSE

To describe what patients with chronic pain expect from a multimodal pain rehabilitation programme.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

Qualitative interviews were used to uncover expectations about a multimodal rehabilitation programme offered at the Pain and Rehabilitations Centre, The University Hospital; Linköping, Sweden. Sixteen women and two men (mean age 37 years; standard deviation 10 years) with chronic benign pain participated. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analyses.

RESULTS

To participate actively in the multimodal pain rehabilitation programme and to learn adequate coping strategies to improve daily life emerged as a main category. It was based on the following four categories comprising expectations about: participating actively in the programme, interacting with the professionals and fellow patients, cognitive effects of the programme and tools for coping, and explicit effects from the programme.

CONCLUSIONS

Many patients expressed expectations which may reflect that the information before the programme had started rehabilitation process at the time point for this study. The results could be applied in rehabilitation programmes by acknowledging expectations to interact with professional team members and fellow patients, by early addressing of positive and negative expectations about the future pain and by incorporating and strengthen expectations of learning to cope with pain. Implications for Rehabilitation Patients' expectations to interact with professional team members and fellow patients by participating actively in the pain rehabilitation programme should be acknowledged in each rehabilitation situation. Patients expressed both positive and negative expectations about their future pain situation and these expectations should be addressed as early as possible in the rehabilitation screening process. Patients' expectations of learning to cope with pain should be incorporated and strengthened in multimodal pain rehabilitation programmes.