Fatigue is a common and debilitating symptom associated with many long-term conditions and is reported to cause significant levels of distress for those individuals. There is a substantial body of literature related to the nature of fatigue however this has not been drawn together and compared across conditions.
The aim of this review was to synthesize data on the nature of fatigue across long-term conditions.
The review was designed as a qualitative meta-synthesis and followed the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines for synthesizing qualitative research. The following databases were searched for the period January 1980-January 2016, Ovid (Medline, Embase, CINAHL and PsycINFO) and manual searching from the reference lists from articles identified by electronic search. Fifty seven studies were included in the review and findings related to the nature of fatigue were extracted and findings meta-synthesized.
The perceived nature of fatigue across long-term conditions was encompassed in one synthesis; the fatigue experience is without precedent, with four categories; a different fatigue to any experienced before, the intensity of fatigue is overwhelming, the trajectory of fatigue, and impact on sleep and sleep disturbance. Just over half of the participants in the included studies were diagnosed with cancer. Patterns in the experience of fatigue by condition were found for cancer related fatigue and post-stroke fatigue where data were able to be synthesized.
While similarities in the nature of the fatigue experienced were found across conditions, differences were also evident, and could be mapped for cancer related fatigue and post-stroke fatigue. Further qualitative research on the experience of fatigue across a wide range of chronic conditions would further contribute to understanding similarities and differences across conditions and inform both research and practice in relation to assessment and management.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 June 2016.
All research outputs
#23,329,066
of 34,410,315 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Pain & Symptom Management
#3,676
of 4,822 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#208,905
of 338,785 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Pain & Symptom Management
#28
of 38 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,315 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 30th percentile – i.e., 30% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,822 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.3. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 38 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 23rd percentile – i.e., 23% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
