What resources do people with persistent pain use to help them better understand their pain? A cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Objectives: Pain education has been shown to reduce pain and disability in people with persistent pain by increasing their understanding of ‘how pain works’. There are many resources that people can engage with to help them learn about pain. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the resources with which people with persistent pain engage, to learn about pain. Secondary aims included investigating the helpfulness of those resources, whether people assess the quality of the resources with which they engage and whether the resources sought differed according to whether or not they had a diagnosis for their pain. Design: Cross-sectional descriptive study. Setting: Online and paper-based surveys. Methods: People with persistent pain were recruited through advertising on social media and through local university health clinics. Participants completed a survey providing details about their pain condition, the resources with which they engaged to learn about pain, how useful they found these resources and whether they assessed the quality of the resources used. Results: Data were collected from 127 online surveys (80% female; age [± SD] was 41 [±16] years). Healthcare professionals were the most common resource with which participants engaged (85.0%), followed by the Internet (68.5%) and scientific articles (52.8%). Books and scientific articles had the highest helpfulness rating; healthcare professionals and pamphlets had the lowest. Most respondents (85.3%) reported assessing the quality of the resources they engaged with. Conclusion: Despite being the most common resource participants engaged with, healthcare professionals were awarded some of the lowest helpfulness ratings. Care needs to be taken to ensure that people with persistent pain are directed towards learning resources that can provide helpful, relevant and evidence-based information.