Using qualitative methods to access the pain experience

Qualitative methods provide us with techniques to access the pain experience of patients in ways that provide explanation for apparent contradictions and idiosyncrasies that are difficult to access. In this article, I review three such strategies and the application of qualitative research to practice: (1) the analysis of the ways participants speak about agonizing pain using narrative inquiry, (2) comparisons of childbirth pain in two cultural groups using ethnography and (3) present a qualitative theory, the Praxis Theory of Suffering. This theory provides a theoretical explanation for behaviours that presently confound the understanding of distress using the Distress Thermometer. An alternative approach, 'reading' patients' behavioural manifestations of distress, is recommended.