Patients First: Toward a Patient-Centered Instrument to Measure Impact of Chronic Pain.
Michiel F Reneman, Kees P D Brandsema, Ernst Schrier and 2 others
PMID 29939365WHAT IT FOUND
People with chronic pain chose fatigue, social life, cramped muscles, sleeping, housekeeping, concentration, feelings of not being understood, and control over pain as the most important attributes.
Some existing pain measures miss some of these.
Key findings
01The 8 most frequently chosen attributes were fatigue, social life, cramped muscles, sleeping, housekeeping, concentration/focus, feelings of not being understood, and control over pain.
02Only 13 of the 68 included instruments showed some form of patient input (19%).
03The most chosen attributes differed across subgroups; housekeeping was fifth for women and 29th for men.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The authors did not perform a systematic review, so they may have missed instruments or attributes. Assigning questionnaire items to attributes was subjective; for example, energy items were placed under fatigue. The focus groups were small, and the 3 attributes they added were never chosen in the survey. Survey respondents were recruited from Dutch patient organizations, and the sample was mostly women (88%) with higher pain intensity and disability than usual populations. Choosing only 8 attributes was difficult: 55% agreed it was easy, and 186 respondents chose more than 8. This is only the first phase of instrument development; no new instrument was tested or validated.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as a validated instrument or proof that treating these attributes helps. It reports what patients selected as most important in a development survey, not a tested treatment effect.