In the management of chronic pain, it is very important to reaffirm the patient's
self-worth and ability through psychological support and spiritual care. The role of
spiritual consultant is to provide spiritual consultation and spiritual care, so that the
medical team can truly implement a whole-person care of the patient including the body,
mind, and family. Pain resilience of chronic pain patients' has been found to be a
different construct from the general resilience in the field of chronic diseases. Pain
resilience emphasizes the cognitive/emotional positivity and behavior persistence of pain
patients' when facing pain. So far, there has been no research on the theme of "pain
resilience and spiritual health". Researchers have seen the necessity of care and
assistance for patients with chronic low back pain. Hence, this study would like to
explore "how pain resilience and spiritual health affect the pain experience of patients
with chronic low back pain ".
Research objectives: 1. To understand how spiritual health and pain resilience interact
to influence the the pain experience in patients with chronic low back pain and 2. To
understand how spiritual health and pain resilience interact and influence they way how
patients with chronic low back pain cope with pain.
Method: This research plan will be implemented upon obtaining the approval from IRB. An
estimated 15 cases will be enrolled. Through in-depth interviews and collection of
observational data during interviews, the interviewer will record, transcribe and analyze
the narratives and experience descriptions.
A spiritual consultant and a psychologist will interview the participants about their
experiences of chronic low back pain, how they interpret their pain experience and how
they cope with the persistent pain. Each participant will be interviewed individually.
Questions related to the following three aspects will be asked:
Attributes: describe the changes in your personality, mood, and general happiness
you have observed after you starting having chronic low back pain.
Pain resilience: How would you describe this persisting pain experience? How do you
arrange your daily activity? What do you do to deal with this persistent pain?
Spirituality: As a person with chronic low back pain, how do you interpret this pain
experience? Do you seek connections with higher powers (such as powers from
religion) when you are desperate because of pain? Since the pain is chronic and
persistent, it might not go away, how would you define your life?
Plan of analysis: The current study will adopt interpretative phenomenological analysis
to to examine the pain experience of the participants. After data was collected through
interview, transcripts will be coded in detail. In the process of analyzing the text, the
investigators will categorize the text into themes.
The results of this study can become an important basis for clinical care of patients
with chronic low back pain.