Painful venous ulcers: themes and stories about living with the pain and suffering

Abstract

Purpose: Describe and explore the meaning of the experience of living with painful venous ulcers.

Subjects and setting: Fourteen people with active painful venous ulcers at the time of initial interview at an outpatient wound center.

Method: A descriptive qualitative approach, known as Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology was used for this study. Semistructured interviews were audio taped, transcribed, and analyzed using Martin Qualitative Analysis Software.

Results: Four of the eight most compelling themes identified by the patients are reviewed in this article. These themes are expecting pain with the ulcer, swelling equals pain, not standing, and starting the pain all over again (painful débridements).

Conclusions: The identified pain descriptors and the constitutive pattern "carrying on despite the pain" have important implications for WOC nursing practice, education, and research.