ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether physician-patient agreement of potential patient problem areas impacts subsequent patient enrollment in an interdisciplinary pain management program. DESIGN: Retrospective chart review of 544 patients who underwent evaluation of their chronic pain. Physicians and their patients endorsed perceived patient problems during the evaluation. The potential problems included 7 clinical domains: pain, sleep, mood, physical functioning, ability to cope with pain, ability to manage pain flare-ups, and pain medication effectiveness. RESULTS: Results indicated statistically significant levels of agreement among the physicians and their patients (free-marginal kappa range, 0.19 to 0.94, P's < 0.001). The highest agreement occurred for pain and the lowest for pain medication effectiveness. Patients who enrolled in a recommended program did not differ from those who did not enroll based on either levels of agreement or average number of physician-patient agreements for the 7 clinical domains (P's > 0.05). Patients recommended for higher-intensity programs were perceived by their evaluating physician to have a significantly greater number of problematic clinical domains than those recommended for less intense pain programs. CONCLUSION: The level of physician-patient agreement regarding the patients' current difficulties did not appear to influence patients' decisions to participate in interdisciplinary pain management. Extraneous, nonclinical factors may have had a greater impact on participation in interdisciplinary pain management than physician-patient agreement. Future research should focus on identifying these factors and their impact. Also, studying the impact of physician-patient agreement beyond enrollment status (eg, on successful program completion) may be helpful in potentially enhancing patient outcomes.
