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Although multiple measures of the causes and consequences of chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) are available and can inform pain management, no quantitative summary of these measures can describe the meaning of pain for a patient. The lived experience of pain tends to be a blind spot in pain management. This study aimed to: (1) integrate qualitative research investigating the lived experience of a range of CNCP conditions; (2) establish common qualitative themes in CNCP experience; and (3) evaluate the relevance of our results through a survey questionnaire based on these themes, administered across the United Kingdom.

Four bibliographic databases were searched from inception to February 2021 to identify Qualitative Evidence Syntheses (QES) that investigated the lived experience of CNCP and its impact on everyday life and activities. Themes and trends were derived by …