Questions that individuals with spinal cord injury have regarding their chronic pain: a qualitative study.

Purpose: To explore the questions that community-dwelling individuals with a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) have regarding their chronic pain and to identify their preferred methods of acquiring this information.

Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 individuals experiencing SCI-related chronic pain. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify participants' questions about their pain and to organise them according to emergent themes.

Results: Six themes pertaining to chronic pain were identified. These included: (1) cause, (2) communication, (3) expectation, (4) getting information, (5) management and (6) other's experience with chronic pain. Participants described using a variety of sources to obtain information about chronic pain including health care providers, other SCI-consumers and the Internet. Participants preferred to have chronic pain information available to them on an as needed basis.

Conclusions: Individuals with SCI have numerous questions about their chronic pain and use a variety of information sources to answer them. Many are dissatisfied with the level of knowledge that family physicians have about SCI-related chronic pain. This study provides valuable information from the consumer's perspective, which can be used to develop interventions to help health care professionals and consumers manage SCI-related chronic pain.