Women's Experience of Labor Pain : Phenomenological Method

Pain is commonly characterized as a multi-dimensional experience, varing in quality as well as in intensity. So, We need to understand the lived experience of primiparous women in order to provide basic information of nursing care. Therefore, The purpose of the study is to explore the construction of labor pain experience. The data are collected through in-depth interviews of 20 primiparous women in Pusan city from March 1998 to May 1998. Their labor pain experiences conducted 1-2 days after delivery at admission room. Each interview lasted about 25 minutes average. I have interviews one time with each subject. The record was taken with the consent of the subject. Data were analyzed by means of Giorgi's phenomenological analysis methods and categorized according to the similarities of its contents. The investigator read the data repeatedly to identify and categorized themes and main meaning. Eleven themes of labor pain as experienced by these subjects were : 1) fear 2) suffering 3) evasion of pain 4) will power about overcome 5) support need 6) apprehension of parent 7) producing confidence 8) obtain his roles 9) attributing the cause of labor pain to others 10) not feeling of touching 11) ambivalence. Five main meaning identified were : 1) fear 2) evading and confrontation 3) the maturity of personality 4) unreality 5) ambivalence. The significes of this study for nursing are : 1) It enables nurses and other health care providers understand more clearly the lived experience of labor pain. 2) It provides that the way of more effective pain management.