Patient Power and Control: A Study of Women with Uncertain Illness Trajectories

2004/02/01 by Pia Åsbring, Anna-Liisa Närvänen · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Health Professions · Medicine · #Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research #Health, psychology, and well-being #Mental Health and Psychiatry

paper · doi:10.1177/1049732303260682

openalex publication_date 2004/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

The authors interviewed 12 women diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and 13 with fibromyalgia with the aim of determining the strategies they perceive themselves as using to gain control over their situation during the health care process. The results highlight various strategies that the women report applying to find a way of managing the illness and to influence caregivers. They describe, for example, how they try to gain control over their situation by acquiring knowledge about the illness. The women also describe various power strategies they use in their interaction with the caregivers to take command of their situation, namely exiting, noncompliance, confrontation, persuasion/insistence, making demands, and demonstrative distancing.

Citations

• Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age
• The american college of rheumatology 1990 criteria for the classification of fibromyalgia
• The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research.

Cited by

• Nothing and Everything: Fibromyalgia as a Diagnosis of Exclusion and Inclusion

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