Clinician perspectives on postamputation pain assessment and rehabilitation interventions.
Tonya L Rich, Kierra J Falbo, Hannah Phelan and 8 others
PMID 37791790WHAT IT FOUND
Most clinicians use pain intensity scales but lack tools to measure how pain affects function.
They report that patient openness and motivation drive engagement with non-drug therapies like mirror therapy, while poor compliance and belief in the treatment are common barriers to success.
Key findings
01Only 56% of clinicians regularly use standardized pain outcome measures, and most rely on numeric intensity scales rather than measures of pain interference with daily life.
02Clinicians identified patient openness, willingness to participate, and motivation as the most frequent facilitators of engagement with non-drug interventions, while poor compliance and lack of belief in the intervention were the most frequent barriers.
03Among clinicians who use mirror therapy, 71% reported that 50% or fewer of their patients who try it experience benefit.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study could not determine the response rate because the number of unique clinicians across all email listservs was unknown. The sample is limited to the VA healthcare system, so findings may not generalize to non-VA settings. The survey was exploratory and descriptive, meaning it reports clinician perceptions and practices rather than testing the efficacy of any intervention. Anonymity was preserved, so it is possible, though considered unlikely by the authors, that some individuals completed the survey more than once.
Declared interests
The study was approved by the Minneapolis VA Health Care System’s Institutional Review Board. The authors did not report any external funding sources or conflicts of interest in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the reported barriers to engagement as evidence that non-drug interventions are ineffective. The study describes clinician perceptions of patient factors, not the clinical outcomes of the treatments themselves.