Abstract
Background: Societal, clinician and patient expectations of treatment outcomes may differ due to different measures of success. This may have implications for measuring progress, monitoring treatment success and patient satisfaction.
Aim: To explore patient expectations about outcome
Method: A qualitative study using in depth interviews with people with chronic pain.
Results: Thirteen chronic pain patients were interviewed, five males and eight females. Age ranged between 24 and 83 years and all had chronic pain in at least one location. Ten interviewees had low back pain. We found that the most important outcome markers for patients were functional tasks that affected every day living. The achievement of these tasks became personal goals. Patients used task achievement to determine treatment success, regardless of whether they had to modify the way they achieved these tasks.
Conclusion: Treatment progress can be monitored using patient determined goals, rather than clinical outcomes which are relatively meaningless to the patient. The additional use of aids or encouraging adaptive behaviour should not be under estimated as part of the treatment process. Patient criteria for success were determined by achieving functional tasks/goals that had previously been difficult. However realistic goal setting remains an important issue that patients and clinicians can jointly negotiate and address.
Correspondence should be addressed to Mr J. O’Dowd, Honorary Secretary at SBPR c/o BOA, Royal College of Surgeons, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3PE.
