Abstract

BACKGROUND Spinal cord injury (SCI) is an experience that changes not only the path of life of the SCI person, but also the life of the spouse, parents, and children of the injured person. Considering that SCI imposes a significant burden on the healthcare system, the aim of the present study was to explain the experiences of SCI men within the first 5 years after the injury. METHODS The present qualitative study was carried out based on conventional content analysis. Data were collected through in-depth and semi-structured interviews with male SCI patients. The participants were selected using purposive sampling and data saturation was achieved after 8 interviews so that no new finding was added. The recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim. Data analysis was performed simultaneously, and content analysis was used to reduce the data, name the data, obtain analytical codes, and finally identify themes. Peer review and finding verification methods were used to ensure rigor of the data. RESULTS Analysis of the findings led to emergence of 4 themes, including going through wide range of suffering, negligence of needs and achieving regrets, relief of the suffering, adaptive paradoxical reactions and 12 sub-themes. CONCLUSIONS Investigation of the first-5-year experiences of SCI patients showed that, following injury, the life of these patients is in a kind of stillness due to a wide range of suffering, exposure to unmet needs, staying in regrets of regaining health, and reactions that rather than being constructive are sometimes destructive. Therefore, living in stillness can be considered as an extract of the experience of SCI patients in the first five years after the injury.