Eloise Carr

The use of the telephone interview for research

The increasing popularity of the telephone interview as a research method may be a reflection of broader social change and technological advances, with increased use and acceptability of telecommunications to support healthcare and service industries in general. Despite its widespread use there are few definitions of the term. Studies which directly compare telephone and face-to-face interviewing tend to conclude that telephone interviewing produces data which are at least comparable in quality to those attained by the face-to-face method. While it has been used for large survey studies, in nursing research the telephone interview is used predominantly in smaller-scale qualitative studies, where contact has already been made with the participants. The telephone interview was used in a study by one of the authors (EC) which explored the experience of postoperative pain. Issues relating to ethical considerations, reliability, validity, limitations and analysis are explored. The use of the approach for pain research is reflected upon before considering the wider applications that are available for this method of data collection in healthcare practice.

Survey of undergraduate pain curricula for healthcare professionals in the United Kingdom

The prevalence and burden of pain has long been reported as problematic. Comprehensive pain education in undergraduate programmes is essential for developing knowledgeable, skilled and effective healthcare professionals. This cross-sectional survey describes the nature, content and learning strategies for pain curricula in undergraduate healthcare programmes in major universities in the United Kingdom (UK). Document analysis also highlighted gaps in pain-related standards from professional regulators and a higher education quality assurance body. The sample consisted of 19 higher education institutions delivering 108 programmes across dentistry, medicine, midwifery, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy and veterinary science. Seventy-four (68.5%) questionnaires were returned averaging 12.0 h of pain content with physiotherapy and veterinary science students receiving the highest input. Pain education accounted for less than 1% of programme hours for some disciplines. Traditional teaching methods dominated (e.g. lectures 87.8%) and only two programmes had fully implemented the International Association for the Study of Pains (IASP) curricula. Minimal pain-related standards were found from professional regulators and the quality assurance documents. Pain education is variable across and within disciplines and interprofessional learning is minimal. Published curricula for pain education have been available for over 20 years but are rarely employed and pain is not a core part of regulatory and quality assurance standards for health professions. The hours of pain education is woefully inadequate given the prevalence and burden of pain. Recommendations include the introduction of pain-related educational standards across all professions, greater integration of pain content in undergraduate programmes and interprofessional approaches to the topic.

“You feel so hopeless”: A qualitative study of GP management of acute back pain

Background Biopsychosocial management of non‐specific back pain in general practice has been problematical, with frequent inappropriate referral for imaging and secondary care interventions and lack of self‐confidence in the ability to provide evidence‐based care.

'Trying to pin down jelly' - exploring intuitive processes in quality assessment for meta-ethnography

BackgroundStudies that systematically search for and synthesise qualitative research are becoming more evident in health care, and they can make an important contribution to patient care. However, there is still no agreement as to whether, or how we should appraise studies for inclusion. We aimed to explore the intuitive processes that determined the ‘quality’ of qualitative research for inclusion in qualitative research syntheses. We were particularly interested to explore the way that knowledge was constructed.MethodsWe used qualitative methods to explore the process of quality appraisal within a team of seven qualitative researchers funded to undertake a meta-ethnography of chronic non-malignant musculoskeletal pain. Team discussions took place monthly between October 2010 and June 2012 and were recorded and transcribed. Data was coded and organised using constant comparative method. The development of our conceptual analysis was both iterative and collaborative. The strength of this team approach to quality came from open and honest discussion, where team members felt free to agree, disagree, or change their position within the safety of the group.ResultsWe suggest two core facets of quality for inclusion in meta-ethnography - (1) Conceptual clarity; how clearly has the author articulated a concept that facilitates theoretical insight. (2) Interpretive rigour; fundamentally, can the interpretation ‘be trusted?’ Our findings showed that three important categories help the reader to judge interpretive rigour: (ii) What is the context of the interpretation? (ii) How inductive is the interpretation? (iii) Has the researcher challenged their interpretation?ConclusionsWe highlight that methods alone do not determine the quality of research for inclusion into a meta-ethnography. The strength of a concept and its capacity to facilitate theoretical insight is integral to meta-ethnography, and arguably to the quality of research. However, we suggest that to be judged ‘good enough’ there also needs to be some assurance that qualitative findings are more than simply anecdotal. Although our conceptual model was developed specifically for meta-ethnography, it may be transferable to other research methodologies.

Meta-ethnography 25 years on: challenges and insights for synthesising a large number of qualitative studies

Studies that systematically search for and synthesise qualitative research are becoming more evident in health care, and they can make an important contribution to patient care. Our team was funded to complete a meta-ethnography of patients’ experience of chronic musculoskeletal pain. It has been 25 years since Noblit and Hare published their core text on meta-ethnography, and the current health research environment brings additional challenges to researchers aiming to synthesise qualitative research. Noblit and Hare propose seven stages of meta-ethnography which take the researcher from formulating a research idea to expressing the findings. These stages are not discrete but form part of an iterative research process. We aimed to build on the methods of Noblit and Hare and explore the challenges of including a large number of qualitative studies into a qualitative systematic review. These challenges hinge upon epistemological and practical issues to be considered alongside expectations about what determines high quality research. This paper describes our method and explores these challenges. Central to our method was the process of collaborative interpretation of concepts and the decision to exclude original material where we could not decipher a concept. We use excerpts from our research team’s reflexive statements to illustrate the development of our methods.

Barriers to Effective Pain Management

In this article my sole aim is to engage the reader to think about the management of pain in a different way. I have deliberately taken a less formal style but provided references if you are interested in following up. The management of pain has often been assumed to be a routine part of care, in fact in the perioperative arena it is the second most common nursing intervention (Juntilla et al 2005). Despite this activity, pain after surgery has been reported to be a consistent problem which has spanned several decades (Marks & Sachar 1973, Wu et al 2002, Ekstein et al 2006). The reasons for this are well documented and include: patient barriers, inadequate knowledge of healthcare professionals, lack of assessment and organisational practices which impede the administration of analgesics and non-pharmacological interventions. Despite this knowledge the changes required in practice are not necessarily forthcoming. The purpose of this paper is to explore the patient, professional and organisational barriers which affect the optimal management of pain in the perioperative period, and provide some practical solutions to help you think about and manage pain more effectively.

Pain: a quality of care issue during patients' admission to hospital

AIM To determine the extent of clinically significant pain suffered by hospitalized patients during their stay and at discharge. BACKGROUND The management of pain in hospitals continues to be problematic, despite long-standing awareness of the problem and improvements, e.g. acute pain teams and patient-controlled analgesia, epidural analgesia. Poorly managed pain, especially acute pain, often leads to adverse physical and psychological outcomes including persistent pain and disability. A systems approach may improve the management of pain in hospitals. DESIGN A descriptive cross-sectional exploratory design. METHOD A large electronic pain score database of vital signs and pain scores was interrogated between 1st January 2010 and 31st December 2010 to establish the proportion of hospital inpatient stays with clinically significant pain during the hospital stay and at discharge. FINDINGS A total of 810,774 pain scores were analysed, representing 38,451 patient stays. Clinically significant pain was present in 38·4% of patient stays. Across surgical categories, 54·0% of emergency admissions experienced clinically significant pain, compared with 48·0% of elective admissions. Medical areas had a summary figure of 26·5%. For 30% patients, clinically significant pain was followed by a consecutive clinically significant pain score. Only 0·2% of pain assessments were made independently of vital signs. CONCLUSION Reducing the risk of long-term persistent pain should be seen as integral to improving patient safety and can be achieved by harnessing organizational pain management processes with quality improvement initiatives. The assessment of pain alongside vital signs should be reviewed. Setting quality targets for pain are essential for improving the patients experience.

Physical Functioning and Opioid use in Patients with Neuropathic Pain

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between opioid dosage and ongoing therapy with physical function and disability in patients with neuropathic pain (NeP). DESIGN Secondary analysis of a prospective cohort. SETTING Multicenter clinical NeP registry. SUBJECTS Seven hundred eighty-nine patients treated for various NeP diagnoses. METHODS The following measures were included: dependent variables. 12-month self-reported physical function (pain disability index [PDI] and medical outcomes study short form-12 physical function [PCSS-12]); independent variables: baseline opioid dose (none, ≤200 mg and >200 mg of morphine equivalent), ongoing opioid use; potential confounding variables: age, sex, baseline pain intensity, and psychological distress (profile of mood states). Analysis of covariance models was created to examine the relationship between opioid therapy and both physical functioning outcomes with adjustment for confounding. RESULTS Complete data was available for 535 patients (68%). Compared with the lower and high dose opioid groups, NeP patients not taking opioids had statistically lower disability and higher physical functioning scores, after adjusting for disease severity. Compared with patients prescribed opioid therapy on an ongoing basis, NeP patients who were not prescribed had statistically lower disability and higher physical functioning scores, after adjusting for disease severity. Improvements in disability and physical functioning scores from baseline and 12-months in all groups were modest and may not be clinically significant. CONCLUSIONS Physical functioning and disability did not improve in patients with NeP who were prescribed opioids compared with those who are not prescribed, even after adjusting for disease severity.

Back pain outcomes in primary care following a practice improvement intervention:- a prospective cohort study

BackgroundBack pain is one of the UKs costliest and least understood health problems, whose prevalence still seems to be increasing. Educational interventions for general practitioners on back pain appear to have had little impact on practice, but these did not include quality improvement learning, involve patients in the learning, record costs or document practice activities as well as patient outcomes.MethodsWe assessed the outcome of providing information about quality improvement techniques and evidence-based practice for back pain using the Clinical Value Compass. This included clinical outcomes (Roland and Morris Disability Questionnaire), functional outcomes, costs of care and patient satisfaction. We provided workshops which used an action learning approach and collected before and after data on routine practice activity from practice electronic databases. In parallel, we studied outcomes in a separate cohort of patients with acute and sub-acute non-specific back pain recruited from the same practices over the same time period. Patient data were analysed as a prospective, split-cohort study with assessments at baseline and eight weeks following the first consultation.ResultsData for 1014 patients were recorded in the practice database study, and 101 patients in the prospective cohort study. We found that practice activities, costs and patient outcomes changed little after the intervention. However, the intervention was associated with a small, but statistically significant reduction in disability in female patients. Additionally, baseline disability, downheartedness, self-rated health and leg pain had small but statistically significant effects (p < 0.05) on follow-up disability scores in some subgroups.ConclusionsGP education for back pain that both includes health improvement methodologies and involves patients may yield additional benefits for some patients without large changes in patterns of practice activity. The effects in this study were small and limited and the reasons for them remain obscure. However, such is the impact of back pain and its frequency of consultation in general practice that this kind of improvement methodology deserves further consideration.Trial registration numberISRCTN: ISRCTN30420389

Moving the Pain Education Agenda Forward: Innovative Models

Unrelieved acute and persistent pain is a widespread global problem for divergent patient groups across the lifespan. Although pain education has been identified as a strategy to improve ineffective pain management practices (1), recent evidence supports the continuing lack of pain content in health science curricula, particularly for prelicensure students in Canada and the United Kingdom (2,3). Comprehensive pain assessment and management are essential to reduce the prevalence and burden of pain, and new strategies are required to support these changes. This collection of articles focuses on the worldwide prevalence of the problem, education initiatives at the international level, and examples of the latest developments in educational methods and pedagogy relevant to moving the global pain education agenda forward. The authors bring expertise that represents both international and Canadian thinking. These articles were selected from presentations given August 26 to 27, 2010, at the first International Pain Education Satellite Symposium held in Toronto, Ontario, in conjunction with the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) 13th World Congress on Pain. Feedback from more than 90 participants from 12 countries indicated that they found these presentations enlightening and helpful. This satellite symposium helped to crystallize previous efforts to establish the IASP Pain Education Special Interest Group, subsequently approved in Montreal, Quebec, in September 2010. The contributing authors are recognized innovative thinkers in their fields, and stimulate ideas about new models of pain education. The aim of the current issue is to provide a resource to anyone involved or hoping to be involved in the future of pain education.