The women attribute the highest priority to their professional identity, spending the majority of their time and energy in an effort to appear as "good stable workers". The disease is seen as a hindrance in this regard, and the illness identity is almost completely rejected. In motherhood, the women prioritize close interaction with their children, and deprioritize external activities. Extended outbreaks of the disease and issues regarding the children force the women to deprioritize working life. Implications for rehabilitation Juggling meaningful identities of rheumatoid arthritis, motherhood, and paid work challenge women in managing their everyday lives. Therefore, rehabilitation professionals should support individuals to develop new strategies to manage the challenges they experience regarding juggling motherhood and work ability. Work is a dominant identity marker for women with rheumatoid arthritis therefore, rehabilitation professionals have an important role to play in investigating possible ways for the individual to maintain employment or return to work. Living with rheumatoid arthritis and being a paid worker challenge women's role performance and thereby their identification as mothers. Therefore, rehabilitation professionals have to support the women and their families.

When healthcare professionals meet a woman with rheumatoid arthritis, they should consider that she might not accept the subidentity as an ill person. Health professionals should not expect that women will prioritise their illness in their everyday life. This could be included in clinical conversation with the women.

Background People with chronic diseases have contact with several different professionals across hospital wards, municipality services and general practice and often experience lack of coherence. The purpose was to explore perceived barriers and facilitators to coherent rehabilitation pathways for health care users with inflammatory arthritis and how coherence can be improved. Methods Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted before a planned inpatient rehabilitation stay, 2-3 weeks and 4-6 months after discharge. Thematic reflexive analysis guided the analysis of data. Concepts of person-centred care, complex adaptive systems and integrated care were applied in the interpretations. Results In all, 11 participants with IA were included. There was one overarching theme, The importance of a person-centred approach, illuminating the significance of professionals who respect healthcare user’ preferences. To use a person-centred approach, demands professionals who are interested in exploring the persons own values, preferences and experiences and incorporate these when planning care and rehabilitation.Connected to the overarching theme, three sub-themes were derived; 1) Experiences of empowerment and dis-empowerment, covering that most want to be in control and act themselves, but felt overwhelmed and lost energy and they tended to give up; 2) Experiences of communication and coordination, encompass how people feel forced to take on coordination and communication tasks themselves although they do not always feel qualified for this. Some asked for a coordination person and 3) Facing everyday life after discharge, covering how initiatives taken by professionals were not always experienced as helpful after discharge. Some gave up and some tried to find alternative paths themselves. Conclusion Professionals taking a person-centred approach facilitated coherent rehabilitation pathways. This encompassed care with respect for individual needs and professionals who empowered patients to self-management. Furthermore, to be aware that interprofessional communication and coordination need to take place both between professional within the same department, between departments and between professionals in different sectors. After discharge, some patients were challenged in their everyday life when trying to follow the advice from the professionals. Professionals, who do not use a person-centred approach, hinder coherence. Patients thus feel compelled to take on communication and coordination tasks.

Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease, and patients with RA receive services in various settings, e.g., in nurse-led follow-up consultations. This study aimed to investigate how the management of RA in everyday life is expressed in interactions between nurses and women with RA during nursing consultations. Methods: The study was conducted as constructivist grounded theory, with data based on participant observations and subsequent interviews with 10 women with RA. Results: A core category was developed, "Collaboration through mutual acknowledgement", which documented how the women and nurses confirmed their shared understanding of the content and the structure of the consultation. Three subcategories were identified: 1) "On safe ground", which illustrated that biomedical factors, such as blood test results and pharmacological treatment, structured the basis of the dialogue. 2) "Venturing forward", which documented how both parties were aware of each other's reactions when the dialogue dealt with women's perspectives of illness in their everyday lives. 3) "Gentle steering", which showed that the nurses gently steered the dialogue if the women strayed from the planned content. Conclusion: Both parties agreed that a disease perspective consistent with biomedical factors formed the basis for further dialogue. Subsequently, the women's perspectives on illness were included, and the women felt acknowledged. Therefore, the recommendation is that the consultations start by agreeing on a shared agenda to facilitate the inclusion of the women's perspectives on illness.