Table 4.

Excerpts from focus groups to illustrate participants sharing experiences about treatment seeking

Topic	Illustrative excerpt
The impact of clinicians and the healthcare system	FP: ‘A friend of mine … went down to [town] hospital and… she’s been on a pain management course —
	MP: ‘They run one in [town 2].’
	FP ‘Oh do they?’
	FP ‘Ask your doctor. ‘
	MP ‘Ask your GP to be referred.’
	FP ‘Yeah to the pain clinic.’
	MP ‘Ask to be referred to the pain clinic in [town 2] and they will refer you on a pain management program, but you have to go through the pain clinic … to go on it.’
	FP ‘No one’s offered me a pain clinic.’ (FG13)
Self-management	FP1:‘it is doing your homework about who you need to see and why you need to see them but I’m sure —’
	FP2:‘That’s the doctor’s job isn’t it?’
	FP1:‘Not always, not always.’
	FP3:‘I think you have to take some responsibility for —’
	FP2:‘But I’m nowhere near a doctor, so if I’ve got a certain pain I wouldn’t know who to go to, I would have no idea.’ (FG8)

FP = female participant. MP = male participant.