Cancer pain: Voices of the Ojibway people

Recognition of the integration of sensory dimensions of Pain with cultural factors has the potential to improve the quality of the clinical encounter between those in pain and their health care providers. This qualitative study used a grounded theory approach to describe the conceptualization of cancer Pain from 18 Ojibway patients, family caregivers, and healers/medicine men from a Reserve community and 13 health professionals (nurses and physicians) from a hospital adjacent to this Reserve. Results revealed that for Ojibway participants, cancer pain epitomized all that was most painful in life. Unlike health professionals, they described the properties of pain as a seamless intertwining of the dimensions of physical sensation, threatening cognitions, emotional, social and spiritual anguish, and intuitive sensing. These Ojibway voices on cancer pain remind us of the interrelatedness of culture in the construction of pain and caution us to broaden the restricted focus we bring to the clinical encounter.