Living with chronic pain in a residential aged care facility

The purpose of the overall study was to explore the lived experiences of older people with chronic unrelieved pain, who live in residential aged care facilities. This paper presents one of the main themes from the study which was conducted using a phenomenological study. This study was undertaken at three aged care facilities within the Hunter New England Area Health Service (HNEAHS). Thirteen people aged 75 years and over, were interviewed for this study. The main outcome measures led to an understanding of what it is like for older people to live with chronic unrelieved pain in a residential aged care facility. A key theme that emerged from this study was “Attending to life” comprising four sub-themes including “preserving oneself”, “feeling useful/useless”, “tending the body”, and “attending to spirituality”. “Attending to life” shows how elderly people with chronic pain responded to the world of the residential aged care facility, in particular, how they immersed themselves in their “living present” whilst suffering with chronic unrelieved pain. An important feature of “attending to life” is that in order to stay actively engaged in the world, the participants busied themselves with acts of self-preservation and self-care. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of self-identity in the nursing home setting and show how unrelieved pain mitigates this.