Table 2 Example of the qualitative content analysis based on the women’s experiences of the journey to CWP
From: Women’s experiences of the journey to chronic widespread pain: a qualitative study
| Meaning unit | Condensed meaning unit | Code | Subcategory | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The pain I have in my hips and shoulders and so on, them I have got gradually because of my job … // My work is very physically demanding … [3] | The pain arose because of my job, which is physically demanding. | Physically demanding work triggers the pain | Unmanageable work-related demands | Experiencing that environmental circumstances affect the pain journey |
| “… if you hadn’t believed what I said and I had left here with a feeling of no I could see that she didn’t believe me at all, and if you had been a doctor, then that increases my pain and I become sad and everything is built up inside” [17] | Everything is built up from within and if someone doesn’t believe me, I become sad and then the pain is aggravated. | Mistrust aggravates the pain | Lack of social support | |
| “It’s the worst for me in the summer when it’s hot, then it feels as though my joints are burning” [12] | The pain is at its worst in the summer when it is hot. | Hot weather aggravates the pain | Unfavorable physical environments | |
| “… then I lost my husband two and a half years ago, and then I realized that I was really depressed because it was difficult but then there is the mental stress as I felt like shit and had a lot of pain … so it’s not just heavy work it’s the mental aspect that affects the pain also” [6] | When my husband passed away, I felt mentally ill and stressed, which aggravated the pain. | Heartache aggravates the pain | Traumatic events | |
| (reason for back problems) “I’ve been sitting down too much .. Sitting down too much and not training enough.” [4] | The pain arose because I was too physically inactive. | Inactivity triggers the pain |
Different levels of physical efforts | Experiencing that lifestyle affects the pain journey |
| “… and I think that it’s because I haven’t dealt with the pain, instead I’ve just thought that it will pass, it will get better …” [6] | The pain has remained as I haven’t dealt with it. | Neglecting consolidates the pain | Unfavorable behavior | |
| “Then if I get more worried or like this when it, yes if I just think about the children and things like that, if I say the grandchildren and when it’s something with them and I get stressed, then I get more tense and then feel more pain in my shoulders and my back …” [11] | When I worry about people dear to me the pain is aggravated. | Worries aggravate the pain | Anxious state of mind | Experiencing that personal attributes affect the pain journey |
| “… it started sometime in my 40s, because then I identified myself with older colleagues who were in pain then … I told them that, aha, now it starts on me and then it was probably a knee or something that wasn’t working properly.” [1] | The pain started in my 40s, when I began to identify myself with older colleagues who were in pain. | Age triggers the pain | Adverse biological impact |