Chinese Oral Cancer Patients' Pain Beliefs: An Application of Leventhal's Common-Sense Model

Background Patients' pain beliefs are the main obstacle to effective pain management. Assessing and correcting negative perceptions is important for improving pain intensity and quality of life of patients with cancer pain. Aims To explore pain beliefs among oral cancer patients using the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation as a theoretical framework. The primary components of the model, cognitive representations, emotional representations, and coping responses, were examined. Design A qualitative method was used. Settings Participants/Subjects Methods Semi-structured, qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with patients newly diagnosed with oral cancer in a tertiary care hospital. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results Interviews with 15 patients revealed that the pain beliefs of patients with oral cancer included three themes: pain cognitive representations of oral cancer, pain emotional representations of oral cancer, and pain coping responses. Conclusions Negative pain beliefs are common among oral cancer patients. This novel application of the self-regulatory model demonstrates that it can be used to capture the key pain beliefs (i.e., cognitions, emotions, and coping responses) of oral cancer patients within a single, unifying framework.