"God Will Ease My Pain": Pain Self-Management Experiences of African American Adults

Black/African Americans' experiences with pain self-management are often perceived as suboptimal and stressful because of cultural incongruence and racism encountered in interactions with the healthcare system. Although the number of qualitative and quantitative studies exploring Black/African American pain management experiences is slowly increasing, there has not been a systematic synthesis on this topic. Hence, the overarching aim of this review of the literature was to use a qualitative meta-ethnographic approach to synthesize knowledge on pain self-management and pain experiences among Black/African Americans. Meta-ethnography is a systematic approach to synthesizing data from multiple studies to enable new insights into the patient experience and their perspectives. Using Noblit and Hare's approach, a meta-ethnographic exploration of six qualitative studies on African American pain self-management and pain experiences was conducted. In the analysis, five overarching themes emerged that reflected perspectives involved in Black/African American pain self-management: divine restoration through faith and God, seeking help-a sign of weakness and judgments, dependence on self-taught pain management, grave distrust in times of hurt, and resilience and pain acceptance. The implications of these findings for nursing practice and future research are addressed.