Pain as embodied experience : a phenomenological study of clinically inflicted pain in adult patients : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing at Massey University

This phenomenological study describes the lived experience of pain inflicted in the context of medically prescribed treatment, explores the meanings of such pain for patients who endured it and for nurses whose actions contributed to its generation, and presents a thematic description of the phenomenon of clinically inflicted pain. The study is informed by phenomenology, both in terms of its premises and orientation, and its research design and method. The participants in the study were 14 adult patients, admitted to hospital following burn injuries, or receiving intravenous chemotherapy upon diagnosis of cancer, and 20 nurses involved in their care. Data collection took place over a period of five months and included participant observation and compilation of field notes, and a total of 89 tape-recorded interviews (48 with patients and 41 with nurses). Through the process of hermeneutic interpretation a number of themes were identified and used to describe the phenomenon of clinically inflicted pain and the structure of the lived experience of the patients and nurses concerned. The phenomenon of clinically inflicted pain is described in terms of four related themes: 1) the hurt and painfulness of inflicted pain; 2) handing one's body over to others; 3) the expectation and experience of being wounded, and 4) restraining the body and the voice. These themes point to the embodied nature of pain experience and the extent to which the person is involved not only in the enduring of pain but also in its generation. The broader lifeworld of clinically inflicted pain involves patients in the experience of constituting such pain, often as punishment and almost always as something unavoidable, and in turn being constituted by their experiences in terms of losing and seeking to regain a sense of embodied self and of personal situation, and by changed experiences of lived space and lived time. Nurses who themselves helped to generate pain, frequently overlooked the patient's li