Recognizing pain as an early warning symptom of ischemic cardiovascular disease: A qualitative artistic representation of the journey

The Use of Arts-Based Methods to Enhance Patient Engagement in Health Research

INTRODUCTION

Patient and care partner engagement in research (PER) is important in generating knowledge to improve healthcare. Arts-based methods (ABM) use art in the research process to share aesthetic knowledge, which is knowledge that may be too complex to share only verbally. Together, PER and ABM are potentially synergistic, as both are participatory, problem-focused, dialogic, and collaborative; yet little is known of the utility of ABM for PER.

METHODS

A narrative review was performed to identify, collate, and summarize the ways ABM has been used with PER and share the impacts of ABM on PER. The databases CINAHL, Scopus, and PubMed were searched, and 15 articles were included.

RESULTS

A wide variety of ABM were used for PER, with some studies using multiple ABMs. The use of ABM for PER was reported to be decolonizing, shifted power from researchers to people with lived experience, and reduced tokenism. People with lived experience shared their knowledge directly through their art, deepening the understanding of their emotions, feelings, and relationships.

CONCLUSION

Researchers should consider the benefits of the participatory nature of ABM and explore how to engage people with lived experience in their work beyond data collection. Researchers engaging people with lived experience should consider using ABM as a way to operationalize PER to elicit aesthetic knowledge and strengthen power equalization.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

No patients or members of the public contributed to this review due to a lack of funding to support their meaningful involvement.

"Breaking through the Brokenness": An Arts-Based Qualitative Exploration of Pregnant Women's Experience of Intimate Partner Violence while Receiving Trauma- and Violence-Informed Antenatal Care

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive, worldwide public health concern. Risk of IPV may elevate during the perinatal period, increasing maternal and fetal health risks. Trauma- and violence-informed care shows promise among interventions addressing associated mental health sequelae. As a secondary analysis, the purpose of this study was to employ a qualitative arts-based exploration to better understand pregnant women's experiences of trauma and violence-informed perinatal care in the context of IPV. Using an arts-based qualitative methodology, different art forms were used to analyze, interpret, and report data, resulting in a layered exploration to represent phenomena. From this, four themes were reflected in four poetic pieces: Black Deep Corners, Triggering my Thoughts, Breaking through the Brokenness, and Now Perfectly Imperfect. Nine pieces of visual art were created reflecting these themes, creating a layered, embodied, artistic way to empathically explore and translate phenomena.

Erratum: Notice of duplicate publication: Qualitative research and pain: Current controversies and future directions

Much of what we know about the meaning and experience of pain has been facilitated through qualitative research. However, qualitative inquiry continues to be underrepresented in the pain literature relative to quantitative approaches. In this Commentary and Introduction to the Special Issue on Qualitative Research and Pain, we present a collection of high-quality, cutting-edge qualitative studies in pain that highlight theoretical and methodological advancements in the field. The articles included in this Special Issue feature a range of designs (e.g., grounded theory, phenomenology, qualitative description), methods of data collection (e.g., interviews, object elicitation, photovoice), and populations (e.g., immigrant women, individuals with heart disease). Throughout this Commentary we also address three common controversies regarding the quality of qualitative research and the stance we took on them for the Issue. These primarily deal with the procedure-related issues of sample size, generalizability, and saturation. We discuss how a more substantive-centered approach to evaluation—that is, an approach that considers the methodological and theoretical significance of the work—is crucial for advancing qualitative research in pain.