Views from the Inside, Part 3: How and Why Families undertake Prescribed Exercise and Splinting Programmes and a New Model of the Families' Experience of Living with Juvenile Arthritis

Abstract

This is the final article in a trilogy that reports an ethnographic study about the insiders' experiences of families that include a child with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). The overall aim of the research was to explore and describe the experiences of families of children with JIA. The first article introduced the disease and the routes to diagnosis and presented the methodology of the study in detail. The second article reported the different experiences of the children with arthritis and their siblings, mothers, fathers and grandparents. This article presents the families' perspectives about prescribed programmes of daily exercises, splinting and medication. The article also introduces a dynamic model of the families' experiences. It concludes with recommendations for future health care service development and for individual practitioners who work with either this specific user group or the families of children with other long-term conditions.