Patient's Views on Pain Management- Qualitative

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    How do chronic pain patients view their treatment? A qualitative analysis into communication in the clinic and treatment efficacy

  • IRAS ID

    206366

  • Contact name

    Tim Salomons

  • Contact email

    t.v.salomons@reading.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Research & Enterprise Services, University of Reading

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    2 years, 0 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    When evaluating clinical outcome measures from patients that are being treated for chronic pain, there is a high degree of variance in improvement and satisfaction rates across individuals. It is currently unclear whether this feature of treatment efficacy is due to individual differences in susceptibility to treatment, variations in the comprehension of the outcome measures themselves, or both. Ergo, is it that different subsets of patients respond to psychological interventions, whilst others do not? Or is it that patients react in a more consistent manner, but the questions posed to them within the outcome measure battery are not detecting the clinical improvement, as the questions are not identifying the aspects of life that are being impacted.

    What this current project aims to do is complete a series of semi-structured interviews to elucidate whether patients that are being treated for chronic pain believed that the experience of their condition was encapsulated within the outcome measures themselves. The interviews will explore what patients and medical staff believe are the critical areas of suffering, improvement and experience of their condition, what they believe their "pain" signifies and whether our current measures are quantifying the correct aspects of the patient's experience of treatment and their condition.

  • REC name

    South Central - Berkshire B Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    16/SC/0632

  • Date of REC Opinion

    13 Jan 2017

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion