Abstract

Attitudes about pain among patients, their family members and the lay-public can be barriers to cancer pain management. The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate attitudinal barriers to cancer-pain management in the general population of Iceland, and to evaluate relationships between barriers and background variables. A secondary aim was to evaluate the prevalence of pain of various origins in the population. The study is guided by a framework by Ward and colleagues, where attitudinal barriers (e.g. fear of addiction) interfere with pain management (under-utilization of analgesics) and consequently quality of life. The present study targets the antecedent variables (attitudes). A random sample of 1286 Icelandic adults was drawn from a national registry holding information about all 278,000 citizens of Iceland. Data collection was conducted with a postal-survey based on The Tailored Design. The Icelandic Barriers Questionnaire-II (IBQ-II), and the Brief Pain Inventory, both reliable and valid measures, were used to evaluate barriers and pain respectively. Of 1286 invited, 599 (46.6%) completed the survey. The mean (SD) age of respondents and non-respondents was 45.28 (17.14) and 44.25 (19.44) respectively. Majority of respondents were female (55.8%), while 47.6% of non-respondents were female. The mean (SD) IBQ-II score was 2.16 (0.77), on a scale of 0 to 5, with higher scores indicating stronger barriers. Education was inversely related to barriers. Those who had personal experience with cancer had lower barriers than those who did not, and health care professionals had lower IBQ-II scores than the rest of the participants. Roughly forty percent of participants had pain in the previous week, and 32.1% of the sample had experienced this pain for more than three months. Barriers to cancer pain management are prevalent in Iceland. They are also stronger than has been seen in research conducted in other countries. Pain of various origins is also prevalent in Iceland. These findings support the need for interventions aimed at pain management in general, and barriers to pain management in particular. This data will aid in the design, implementation, and evaluation of educational interventions and quality-improvement-projects, aimed at overcoming barriers to management of cancer-pain, and improvement of pain management.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 3155200; ProQuest document ID: 305112856. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Dr. Sigrour Gunnarsdottir, PhD, RN

Sigma Membership

Non-member

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Descriptive/Correlational

Research Approach

Quantitative Research

Keywords:

Pain Control, Cancer Patients, Quality of Life

Advisors

Ward, Sandra

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

The University of Wisconsin - Madison

Degree Year

2004

Rights Holder

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All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2020-10-13

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