The good pain patient: a critical evaluation of patients’ self-presentations in specialist pain clinics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Established research supports collaborative patient-clinician communication as a means of improving pain management and decreasing opioid use by patients with chronic pain. However, much of this scholarship emphasises clinicians’ capacities to shape and improve communication; limited research investigates patients’ roles in this process. Drawing on 40 ethnographic observations of patient-clinician interactions, clinical spaces and case conferences within one specialist pain clinic in Brisbane, Australia, this paper investigates how and why patients present themselves in particular ways within consultations. Our theoretical lens combines concepts from Goffman on patienthood and stigma with Foucauldian theories of pastoral and disciplinary power. Findings suggest that elements of the clinical environment – namely posters – usher patients towards presenting in what we conceptualise as the ‘good pain patient’ role. In this role, patients demonstrate that they are moral, responsible, and contributing members of society. Yet, such a role is problematic to opening communication, with the role constraining what is socially acceptable for patients with chronic pain to say, do, or feel. In recognising how clinical contexts facilitate problematic good pain patient presentations, this paper directs attention to the spatial and relational nature of implicit clinical expectations and constrained good pain patient presentations.