Painworld: A Phenomenological View of Veteran Experiences of Living with Chronic Pain

Abstract

In the USA, military veterans experience chronic pain almost twice as much as the civilian population. The impact chronic pain has on the lives and lived experiences of veterans is striking. Ethnographic research allows for researchers to gain insights into the meanings of their lived experience of chronic pain. Between 2017 and 2019, at the height of the “opioid epidemic,” I performed an ethnographic study at a Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center in New England that consisted of qualitative semi-structured interviews with veterans who lived with chronic pain, as well as VA staff engaged in chronic pain care. I also engaged in participant observation and took extensive field notes throughout this time. The context of the opioid epidemic era additionally shaped the world these veterans lived in due to shifts in treatment approaches and perceptions of chronic pain both in healthcare settings and socially. In analyzing my observations in the VA space and illness narratives of older, white, male military veterans who live with chronic pain, I formed a pain-centered phenomenological concept of a painworld. The painworld shares several characteristics with the chronic pain lifeworld—namely that both are formed naturally, historically conditioned, intersubjective, and dynamic—and allows for a novel way to capture how pain (and pain care) alters the lives and daily lived experiences of this subset of the veteran population.

Do you have chronic pain? Because if you don’t have chronic pain, you won’t understand.—Veteran Study Participant