Table 2 Conceptual categories and example quotations from participants for themes 2 and 3
From: How patients with gout become engaged in disease management: a constructivist grounded theory study
Theme 2: Supporting management of gout | |
Conceptual category | Example quotations |
Being organized | “Well, I’m on other medications, so I’ve got a very regimented schedule when I take a medication.” (Participant 1, male) “It’s like brushing my teeth now, I gotta do it.” (Participant 2, male) |
Identifying motivation | “If I don’t take my medication, I don’t want to get sick, right, because I’ve got to take care of my family and my husband and my housework too… and then I do my volunteering too.” (Participant 3, female) “Remembering what it’s like to have difficulty getting, getting your shoe on and walking around.” (Participant 9, male) |
Taking control | “I mean the bottom line is I’m the patient and know my body so ultimately it becomes my responsibility.” (Participant 12, male) “then in my you know research online, I did a little bit more, I discovered a few more things and what the, what the causes were.” (Participant 8, male) |
Seeing a difference | “Now it’s down to about 350, 360, which is obviously a huge difference taking the medication.” (Participant 2, male) “Well, it was about a year after but yeah, it (gout) came back, and I stopped it (medication) myself. I, I shouldn’t have. I probably should just have continued, you know.” (Participant 6, male) |
Resonating importance of gout medications | “I really had the suspicion the way in which I’ve, I’ve reacted to the sole, solely to the medication change.” (Participant 9, male) “The lesson I’ve learnt is not to stop the allopurinol.” (Participant 6, male) |
Developing acceptance | “[rheumatologist] said it’s probably taken me 30 years to get this bad so it’s not gonna go away in five minutes.” (Participant 11, male) “I mean you know like you wake up one day and you’ve got, got this funny pain in your body, you go to see the doctor and ultimately you go through the process.” (Participant 12, male) |
Theme 3: Interfering with management of gout | |
Conceptual category | Example quotations |
Disliking taking medication | “I don’t particularly like relying on medication in general so I guess it’s just personal philosophy.” (Participant 8, male) “I ended up at you know taking more and more medications to the stage that it, I wasn’t really comfortable with that.” (Participant 9, male) |
Fearing side effects | “And I guess not knowing, not knowing what the medication’s really gonna do say 10 years from now. Obviously they don’t make medications to kill you, right?” (Participant 2, male) “But then again you know the side effect and all that is I’m so scared.” (Participant 3, female) |
Affecting personal identity | “You know like if I had, if I had any choice in the matter, I’d, I’d rather be in a position where you know like I’m, I have my health back that I had in my youth but that’s a dream.” (Participant 12, male) “Well if he says women don’t have gout, what’s this in my toes and why did they give me shots of whatever at the hospital and why did they extract what they told me was tophi.” (Participant 7, female) |
Forgetting medications | “Not on purpose. I, I go away for a weekend for example and leave it at home, just because I’d forgotten it.” (Participant 9, male) “Well if I do, I just take it a little bit later, that’s all.” (Participant 10, male) |
Lacking knowledge/being misinformed | “Well, I only took it periodically, maybe for a week and my gout rescinded. So I didn’t see any sense in taking it again.” (Participant 1, male) “Yeah, it’s, because you know just my understanding of, of my medications, I took it wrong.” (Participant 5, male) |