Clinical utility of digital pain drawings captured by people living with musculoskeletal pain conditions: a qualitative study.

Abstract

Background: Digital pain drawings are an emerging method for pain assessment, but it is still unclear how these could best support pain treatment and management decisions. Therefore, this study explored the potential clinical utility of digital pain drawings.

Methods: We conducted a narrative study, involving qualitative interviews with healthcare professionals providing pain management services to people living with musculoskeletal pain conditions working across different disciplines and care levels in the healthcare system of the United Kingdom. We transcribed interviews, conducted thematic content analysis to identify themes and presented results using a framework approach.

Results: We interviewed three general practitioners, five rheumatology healthcare professionals, four physiotherapists, two pain consultants and one rheumatology nurse. We identified four themes describing current pain assessment practices, potential advantages of digital pain drawings either alone or in combination with other pain information (e.g. perceived pain triggers and relieving factors) and outcome measures (e.g. quality of sleep, function and anxiety). Digital pain drawings provide an opportunity of enriching patient-provider communication, particularly for people with language barriers. Digital pain drawings may also support healthcare professionals across different disciplines and care levels (e.g. primary and secondary care) in decisions related to referrals, differential diagnosis, treatment planning, evaluating response to treatment and scheduling follow-up visits when combining pain drawings with other pain information, such as pain consequences and perceived causes.

Conclusion: Digital pain drawings are clinically useful because of their potential to guide diagnosis, treatment and management choices in managing musculoskeletal chronic pain. Future research should investigate how these potential benefits are achieved by integrating digital pain drawings in clinical practice across different disciplines and care levels in the UK's healthcare system and beyond.