| Summary: | The overall aim of this thesis was to study outcomes and experiences of multimodal rehabilitation programmes (MMRP) for patients with chronic pain in northern Sweden, focusing on gender and age. This thesis is based on four studies that used both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative studies (I-III) investigated patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) from the Swedish Quality Registry for Pain Rehabilitation (SQRP) collected during 2011-2016 at two specialist clinics in northern Sweden. Adults aged 18-65 years were included, n=436 (356 women and 83 men), divided into three age groups (18-30, 31-45 and 46-65 years of age). Data from the two programmes at three measurement occasions were used, at the start of MMRP, immediately after MMRP and at one-year follow-up. Descriptive and multivariate statistics were used in Studies I-III. The analyses were performed separately for women, men and three different age groups. In Study I, the analysis was performed in two steps: in the first step the two patient populations in the two MMRPs were analysed separately and in the next step, the patients in the two programmes were analysed together. In Studies (II-III), the patient in the programmes were analysed together. In Study IV, a qualitative design was used to explore how patients with chronic pain experienced staying at a residency during participation in MMRP. In Study IV, a grounded theory method with emergent design was used for data collection and analysis. Individual semi-structured interviews with 12 patients (8 women and 4 men) with experiences of MMRP were conducted. In Study I, patients improved regardless of the design of the MMRP in terms of pain intensity, emotional functioning, activity and physical functioning at the one-year follow-up. For both programmes, the women were found to improve in more variables than the men did. In Study II, all subgroups (men, women and age groups) improved in terms of pain intensity and emotional functioning immediately after MMRP. The results revealed that ...
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