"Sense of Control": Patients' Experiences of Multimodal Pain Rehabilitation and its Impact in their Everyday Lives.
Objective
Long-lasting pain is a challenge for pa-tients' everyday lives. The aim of this study was to examine how women and men who have participa-ted in multimodal pain rehabilitation experience its impact in their everyday lives.


Patients and methods
Individual semi-structured interviews with 5 women and 3 men who had parti-cipated in multimodal pain rehabilitation at a clinic in Sweden, analysed using qualitative content ana-lysis.


Results
Participants perceived that their "sense of control" increased, which had a positive impact in their everyday life. Sense of control consisted of 3 categories: importance of the patient-provider re-lationship, knowledge gained (especially on body functions and medication), and pain in a social con-text. Three results were discussed in particular: (i) a trustful patient-provider relationship based on confidence in the provider's expertise was a pre-requisite for pain acceptance; (ii) patients were aware of gender norms in healthcare; (iii) social support was not stressed as important to cope with pain.


Conclusion
The importance of patients' confidence in the provider's expertise and patients' awareness about gender norms need consideration in terms of the patient-provider encounter. The value of social support for pain rehabilitation was found to be less important compared with previous research; this should be explored further.
['Samulowitz|Anke|A|', 'Nordstrom|Pia|P|', 'Wiklund|Malin|M|', 'Stankovic|Nenad|N|', 'Hensing|Gunnel|G|']
gender social support acceptance process chronic pain