The prevalence of musculoskeletal pain at most sites increases with age, including the back, knees, hips and other joints and neuropathic pain is also more common in older adults. Along with the judicious use of numerical tools, this requires innovative methods to elicit verbal accounts, such as using similes and metaphors to help older adults describe and discuss their experience, and contextualising the effects of pain on activities that are important to them.Ĭhronic pain affects more than 50% of community-dwelling older adults and there is an age-related increase in individuals up to 80 years old. The importance of attending to individuals’ stories as a meaningful way of describing pain for older adults is highlighted, suggesting that a narrative approach, as recommended and researched in other areas of medicine, may usefully be applied in pain assessment for older adults. Following analysis, the following main themes emerged: diversity in conceptualising pain using a simple numerical score personalising the meaning of pain by way of stories, similes and metaphors and, contextualising pain in relation to its impact on activities. Qualitative individual interviews and one group interview were undertaken with 23 older adults. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed using a framework approach. MethodsĬognitively intact men and women aged over sixty-five who lived in the community opted into the study through responding to advertisements in the media and via contacts with groups and organisations in North-East Scotland. This paper reports a qualitative exploration of older adults’ accounts of living with chronic pain, focusing on how they describe pain, with a view to informing approaches to its assessment. Yet, chronic pain is not fully understood from older adults’ perspectives subsequently, pain management in later life is not necessarily based on their priorities or needs. Poorly managed pain threatens independent functioning, limits social activities and detrimentally affects emotional wellbeing. Over 50% of older adults experience chronic pain.

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