Abstract
Background
Many outpatient chronic pain clinics administer extensive patient intake questionnaires
to understand patients’ pain and how it impacts their lives. At our institution's
pain clinic, many patients include free text in these predominantly closed-ended questionnaires,
but little is known about the content categories included in this free text.
Aim
This study examined free text entries on chronic pain patient intake questionnaires.
Method
We analyzed 270 occurrences of free text across 43 patient intake questionnaires of
people living with chronic pain using a qualitative content analytic approach.
Results
We identified two overarching thematic categories of free text: (1) what they say
(characterizes the topic of the free text); and (2) why they say it (characterizes
perceived limitations of the patient intake questionnaire format). We also documented
the frequency highlighting how often themes and their associated sub-themes (detailed
below) were indicated. Within the What they say category, three main themes emerged:
(1) health (34.9%; e.g., pain); (2) health service use (27.9%; e.g., medication);
and (3) psychosocial factors (20.9%; e.g., relationships). Within the Why they say
it category, four main themes emerged: (1) adding information (86.0%; e.g., elaborates/contextualizes);
(2) narrow response options (65.1%; e.g., varies); (3) problems with the question
(18.6%; e.g., not applicable); and (4) response error (4.7%; e.g., answers incorrectly/misinterprets
question).
Conclusions
People living with chronic pain appear motivated to add additional, unprompted information
to their patient intake questionnaires. The results from this study may inform changes
to chronic pain patient intake questionnaires which could facilitate improvements
in chronic pain patient-health care provider communication.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 15, 2022
Accepted:
August 13,
2022
Received in revised form:
July 14,
2022
Received:
March 9,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2022 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
