Adapting to chronic pain: A focused ethnography of black older adults

This study aimed to understand the coping strategies used by a group of Black older adults to manage chronic pain. To this end, a focused ethnography was completed within a senior housing facility. Following participant observation, 106 residents completed informal interviews and surveys comprised of a demographic tool, the Brief Pain Inventory, the PROMIS Global Health scale, and the Psychological Stress Measure – 9. Further, a subset of 20 participants that reported daily pain completed formal semi-structured interviews, which were recorded and transcribed. Descriptive statistics were completed on survey data while interviews were analyzed contextually and thematically. The adaptive coping strategies used by participants to manage pain included: remaining positive, remaining active, being engaged in the community, prayer/meditation, and maintaining positive support systems. Effective coping strategies lead to compensated levels of adaptation for participants. A middle range schema of pain is presented that may guide future nursing pain management practice.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Geriatric Nursing

• Publication date

  2019-08-31

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.gerinurse.2019.08.001PMID 31481258PMCID 8896290
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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