Abstract
Aim
Pain is a complex issue that can benefit from treatment that considers personal circumstances and experiences. We developed a novel digital decision aid tool (DAT), named Understanding Persistent Pain (UPP) that can be used during pain consultations with pharmacists and examined whether it can help produce more personalised management plans.
Methods
The UPP DAT asks people to make choices between different pain management plans in a way that resembles real-world decisions. The UPP DAT works out in real time what features of pain management are liked and disliked and creates a personalised report that can be used by patients and pharmacists to help guide the consultation.
We carried out literature searches and interviews with patients, pharmacists and GPs to design our UPP DAT. Pharmacists then invited patients for pain consultations to use the tool. Current busy workloads did not allow us to fully test the tool during consultations, so we also organised a patient tester event with people living with pain to directly test the UPP DAT.
Results
Pharmacists and patient testers who got to use the UPP DAT found it useful to inform a pain consultation and to get people to think of the things they liked and disliked. Given that busy workloads are expected to continue, we found the tool would be most useful if redesigned to be completed by patients in their own time or before a consultation for them to share the report with their pharmacist or doctor.
Pain is a complex issue that can benefit from treatment that considers personal circumstances and experiences. We developed a novel digital decision aid tool (DAT), named Understanding Persistent Pain (UPP) that can be used during pain consultations with pharmacists and examined whether it can help produce more personalised management plans.
Methods
The UPP DAT asks people to make choices between different pain management plans in a way that resembles real-world decisions. The UPP DAT works out in real time what features of pain management are liked and disliked and creates a personalised report that can be used by patients and pharmacists to help guide the consultation.
We carried out literature searches and interviews with patients, pharmacists and GPs to design our UPP DAT. Pharmacists then invited patients for pain consultations to use the tool. Current busy workloads did not allow us to fully test the tool during consultations, so we also organised a patient tester event with people living with pain to directly test the UPP DAT.
Results
Pharmacists and patient testers who got to use the UPP DAT found it useful to inform a pain consultation and to get people to think of the things they liked and disliked. Given that busy workloads are expected to continue, we found the tool would be most useful if redesigned to be completed by patients in their own time or before a consultation for them to share the report with their pharmacist or doctor.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Feb 2024 |
Bibliographical note
The research team thank all participants (patients and healthcare professionals) who took part in this research project. We thank the members of our Patient Advisory Group. We also thank Amanda Cardy from the NRS Primary Care Network for her help in recruitment. We want to thank Gin Nie Chua, Nicolas Krucien, Terry Porteous and Pearl Cameron for their contributions as part of the research team. We thank the Royal Pharmaceutical Society for their help in recruitment and dissemination of the project. We also thank Grampian Pain Support and Affa Sair for their help in participant recruitment and dissemination of the study amongst people living with persistent pain. Finally, we thank Yojana Lotankar and Lisa Duncan for their help throughout the patient testing event and insight of its feedback.This abstract presents research and training funded by Pharmacy Research UK (PRUK-2016-PG1-A). The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the funder.