Table 5 Potential positive impacts of digital pain self-reporting tools to facilitate pain management
People who may benefit | Potential positive impact | Illustrative quote |
|---|---|---|
People who lack self-efficacy | Increased pain awareness and self-efficacy | “It gives you a little bit of autonomy and…ownership over your own pain…and ability to sort it” (Female patient participant; FG with people living in deprived areas) |
Supporting pain self-management | “it [could] potentially be a very powerful aid to self-care if you actually had access to the history of it. Because you have objective comparisons about how your pain was progressing and if as well at the same time you could put on some sort of contemporary note about your activities, be it dietary or physical, all of that empowers you as an individual to think about why has it got worse today, why was it better yesterday” (Male patient participant; FG with older adults) | |
People with multiple co-morbidities | Supporting management of complex pain | “….about the multi morbidity pain, so when people have pain in more than one part of the body I think the manikin can reflect that very well to a certain extent” (Chronic pain researcher; FG with older adults) |
Older people | Real-time pain self-reporting | “it will make life easier for them [older people] because it will be the first place that we will go when we are having our pain” (Female patient participant; FG with older adults) |
People with language barriers | Aiding patient-provider communication | “it has the potential to overcome some of the language barriers that you may see across the different ethnic groups, more for clinical practice I think rather than for research” (Rheumatologist; FG with ethnic minorities) |
People with limited financial resources | Remote monitoring opportunities | “I was thinking about this idea of being able to show people remotely the symptom diary. Because it's potentially a way to reduce some of the gaps because if you don't actually have to come in to see the doctor to show them your symptom diary, that could actually save people travel money, getting a bus or a taxi” (Female patient participant; FG with people living in deprived areas) |
People with disability | Claiming public benefits | “Potentially, can this app be used for helping people claim benefits and PIP [Personal Independence Payments]?” (Female patient participant; FG with people living in deprived areas) |
People experiencing issues with healthcare services | Recognition of a health problem | “making it visible….that’s one of the main advantages about journeys to being diagnosed and getting their pain recognised by the medical profession” (Female patient participant; FG with older adults) |
Addressing provider biases | “I think it also has the potential to remove some of the conscious or unconscious bias that clinicians might have in hearing how people are describing their pain because it's a standard way of presenting the self-reported information” (Rheumatologist; FG with ethnic minorities) | |
Enriching communication | “But actually people in pain, particularly chronic pain, tell us it’s not just my knee, it’s not just my back, it’s lots of other areas. So to be able to capture pain may be informative over and above just going to your GP with your app and saying this is what my pain is like…and it has a potential of enhancing health communication” (Chronic pain researcher; FG with older adults) | |
Active involvement in pain treatment | “With my rheumatoid arthritis, I have to take a rituximab infusion every six to nine months. And by using this [digital pain self-reports] I can track quite easily when I'm ready for the next infusion because the intensity of pain increases and my mobility decreases…rather than just waiting for my consultant, ringing the rheumatology department up, asking for another blood test and then arranging an infusion to manage the pain better” (Male patient participant; FG with ethnic minorities) |