“It’s all about the story”. Osteopaths’ experiences of exploring menopausal symptoms: a qualitative interview study
Gelli, Nicoletta and Abbey, Hilary (2022) “It’s all about the story”. Osteopaths’ experiences of exploring menopausal symptoms: a qualitative interview study. International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine. (In Press)
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Abstract
ABSTRACT Background: The prevalence of natural menopause means that middle aged women seeking osteopathic treatment are likely to have symptoms, but it is unknown how osteopaths explore and give advice about it. Aim: To explore osteopaths’ experiences of screening for symptoms of menopause and providing advice to climacteric patients. Methods: Elements of interpretative Grounded Theory, via semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of six experienced osteopaths and constant comparative analysis to identify themes. Results: Three themes emerged: Breaking the ice: describing the menopause as a sensitive topic with social, personal, and professional barriers to explore it; Personal - not so personal, revealing the influence of practitioners’ personal experiences of the menopause; and Storytelling, illustrating osteopaths’ narratives about patient interactions. Conclusions: The three themes combined flexibly to form partially overlapping therapeutic approaches, underpinned by participants’ personal experience of the menopause and conception of osteopathy: Sharing Stories, where personal disclosure is leveraged to enhance the rapport, with links to the Communicator therapeutic approach (Thomson 2013b); Telling Stories, where the absence of personal experience led to a de-personalised narrative and elements of the Treater approach; and Changing the Story, where personal experience plays no role and the focus is on patients’ empowerment, (Educator approach). Further research is needed to explore findings on osteopaths without personal experience of menopause and to evaluate osteopaths’ training to address sensitive topics. Implications for education/practice: - Some osteopaths reported feeling unprepared for discussing complex menopausal symptoms, which osteopaths with personal experience of menopause overcome by leveraging a shared narrative. This is unavailable to male or younger practitioners without specialisation in female health, suggesting that further education may be helpful prior to starting practice. - Findings suggest that further training about the evidence for managing menopausal symptoms, and cognitive communication approaches to patient education could promote sustainable behaviour changes. - New educational curricula and clinical training could incorporate a broader biopsychosocial perspective of the menopause and communication skills training to support sensitive and effective patient care, irrespective of an osteopath’s personal experience, specialisation, age, gender. Keywords: Menopause, Narrative Medicine, Osteopathy, Therapeutic Relationship
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences > School of Medicine |
| Depositing User: | Sandy Storey |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jan 2023 12:16 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Jan 2023 12:16 |
| URI: | https://uco.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/181 |
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