Health-related experiences of adults with chronic cough: Empirical research mixed methods.

AIM: To describe adults' health-related experiences with chronic cough. DESIGN: Survey and interviews. METHODS: Participants completed questionnaires and interviews, to explore chronic cough's impact and management. DATA SOURCES: Patients aged 18-85 years with at least three cough-related encounters within 56-120 days. RESULTS: Forty-one patients were surveyed. Mean cough severity was 4.5 (scale 0-9). Chronic cough-related problems included embarrassment (66%), fatigue (56%), and anxiety or depression (49%). Testing was judged insufficient by 44%. Only 28% were satisfied with treatment; 20% reported abandoning treatment due to ineffectiveness. Interview themes (N = 30) included frustration with diagnostic uncertainty, and feelings of therapeutic futility. Some reported psychological distress. Work and socializing were commonly disrupted. CONCLUSION: Diagnostic uncertainty, perceived limitations of testing, and treatment failures suggest needs for better approaches to evaluating and treating chronic cough. Special attention to identifying and addressing mental health issues appears warranted.

Qualitative Analysis of Team Communication with a Clinical Texting System at a Midwestern Academic Hospital.

BACKGROUND: Hospitals are increasingly replacing pagers with clinical texting systems that allow users to use smartphones to send messages while maintaining compliance for privacy and security. As more institutions adopt such systems, the need to understand the impact of such transitions on team communication becomes ever more significant. METHODS: We conducted focus groups with hospitalists and individual interviews with nurses at one academic medical center in the Midwest. All interviews and focus groups were audiorecorded, transcribed, and deidentified for analysis. All transcripts and notes were independently read by two members of the research team and coded for themes. RESULTS: Twenty-one hospitalists and eight nurses participated in the study. Although study participants spoke favorably of texting, they identified more dissatisfactions with texting than benefits. There were disagreements regarding appropriate texting practices both within and between the hospitalists and nurses. CONCLUSION: Despite the benefits of texting, there is room for improving team communication and understanding in the realm of clinical texting. A lack of shared understanding regarding when and how to use texting may require long-term solutions that address teamwork and appropriateness.

"I Don't Want to Spend the Rest of my Life Only Going to a Gender Wellness Clinic": Healthcare Experiences of Patients of a Comprehensive Transgender Clinic.

BACKGROUND: Transgender individuals are less likely to have had a primary care visit in the last year than cisgender individuals. While the importance of multidisciplinary clinics for transgender care has been established, little is known about the healthcare experiences of transgender patients with these clinics. OBJECTIVE: To describe how patients experience transgender clinics and how these experiences compare to those experiences in other settings. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-one adult patients of a gender health program. DESIGN AND APPROACH: Semi-structured interviews of transgender patients. The interviews focused on two domains: healthcare experiences and relationships with healthcare providers. KEY RESULTS: Overall, transgender patients expressed a need for healthcare services, particularly for primary care, that are partially met by the comprehensive care clinic model. Limitations in access included the lack of willing providers, where the patients live, and long wait times for appointments. Participants recounted a range of experiences, both positive and negative, with providers outside of the transgender clinic, but only positive experiences to share about providers from the transgender clinic. CONCLUSION: Outside specialty transgender settings, many patients had negative experiences with providers who were unwilling or unable to provide care. This study speaks to the need for primary care providers who can and will treat transgender patients, as well as the need for healthcare spaces that feel safe to transgender patents.

Insecure messaging: how clinicians approach potentially problematic messages from patients.

OBJECTIVE: Secure messaging has become an integrated function of patient portals, but misuse of secure messaging by both patients and clinicians can lead to miscommunication and errors, such as overlooked urgent messages. We sought to uncover variations in clinician approaches and responses to messaging with patients. METHODS: In this two-part study, 20 primary care clinicians (1) composed message responses to five hypothetical patient vignettes and messages and (2) were subsequently interviewed for their perspectives on appropriate circumstances for secure messaging. Messages and interviews were analyzed for themes. RESULTS: Clinicians have different experiences with, and perceptions of, secure messaging. The messages the clinicians wrote were uniformly respectful, but differed in degrees of patient-centeredness and level of detail. None of the clinicians found their messaging workload to be unmanageable. From the interviews, we found divergent clinician perspectives about when to use secure messaging and how to respond to emotional content. CONCLUSION: Clinicians have different opinions about the appropriateness of secure messaging in response to specific medical issues. Our results noted a desire and need for greater guidance about secure messaging. This aspect of informatics education warrants greater attention in clinical practice. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: We summarize the types of issues raised by the participants yet to be addressed by existing guidelines. Further guidance from hospitals, professional societies, and other institutions that govern clinician behavior on the appropriateness and effectiveness of delivering care through secure messaging may aid clinicians and patients.

Managing Chronic Pain in an Opioid Crisis: What Is the Role of Shared Decision-Making?

Shared decision-making (SDM) is a widely-advocated practice that has been linked to improved patient adherence, satisfaction, and clinical outcomes. SDM is a process in which patients and providers share information, express opinions, and build consensus toward a treatment decision. Chronic pain and its treatment present unique challenges for SDM, especially in the current environment in which opioids are viewed as harmful and a national opioid crisis has been declared. The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand treatment decision-making with patients taking opioids for chronic pain. Ninety-five clinic visits and 31 interviews with patients and primary care providers (PCPs) were analyzed using the constant comparison method. Results revealed that 1) PCPs desire patient participation in treatment decisions, but with caveats where opioids are concerned; 2) Disagreements about opioids, including perceptions of lack of listening, presented challenges to SDM; and 3) PCPs described engaging in persuasion or negotiation to convince patients to try alternatives to opioids, or appeasing patients requesting opioids with very small amounts in an effort to maintain the patient-provider relationship. Results are discussed through the lens of Charles, Gafni, and Whelan's SDM model, and implications of the role of the patient-provider relationship in SDM and chronic pain treatment are discussed.

"I'm Not Gonna Pull the Rug out From Under You": Patient-Provider Communication About Opioid Tapering.

In response to increases in harms associated with prescription opioids, opioid prescribing has come under greater scrutiny, leading many health care organizations and providers to consider or mandate opioid dose reductions (tapering) for patients with chronic pain. Communicating about tapering can be difficult, particularly for patients receiving long-term opioids who perceive benefits and are using their medications as prescribed. Because of the importance of effective patient-provider communication for pain management and recent health system-level initiatives and provider practices to taper opioids, this study used qualitative methods to understand communication processes related to opioid tapering, to identify best practices and opportunities for improvement. Up to 3 clinic visits per patient were audio-recorded, and individual interviews were conducted with patients and their providers. Four major themes emerged: 1) explaining-patients needed to understand individualized reasons for tapering, beyond general, population-level concerns such as addiction potential, 2) negotiating-patients needed to have input, even if it was simply the rate of tapering, 3) managing difficult conversations-when patients and providers did not reach a shared understanding, difficulties and misunderstandings arose, and 4) nonabandonment-patients needed to know that their providers would not abandon them throughout the tapering process. PERSPECTIVE: Although opioid tapering can be challenging, helping patients to understand individualized reasons for tapering, encouraging patients to have input into the process, and assuring patients they would not be abandoned all appear to facilitate optimal communication about tapering.

The patient-provider relationship in chronic pain care: providers' perspectives.

BACKGROUND: Pain is the most commonly reported symptom in primary care and is a leading cause of disability. Primary care providers (PCPs) face numerous challenges in caring for patients with chronic pain including communication and relational difficulties. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to elicit providers' perspectives on their experiences in caring for patients with chronic pain. DESIGN: The design used was a qualitative study using open-ended, in-depth interviews. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty providers (10 men, 10 women) from five different clinics were interviewed at the Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center. RESULTS: Three broad themes emerged from the analysis: 1) providers emphasized the importance of the patient-provider relationship, asserting that productive relationships with patients are essential for good pain care; 2) providers detailed difficulties they encounter when caring for patients with chronic pain, including feeling pressured to treat with opioids, believability of patients' reports of pain, worries about secondary gain/diversion, and "abusive" or "difficult" patients; and 3) providers described the emotional toll they sometimes felt with chronic pain care, including feeling frustrated, ungratified, and guilty. FINDINGS: Findings were interpreted within a model of patient-centered care. CONCLUSIONS: The clinical implications of these findings are two-fold. First, PCPs' needs cannot be ignored when considering pain care. PCPs need support, both instrumental and emotional, as they care for patients with chronic pain. Second, improving PCPs' patient-centered communication skills-including demonstrating empathy and encouraging shared decision-making-holds promise for alleviating some of the strain and burden reported by providers, ultimately leading to improved patient care.

Self-management support and communication from nurse care managers compared with primary care physicians: a focus group study of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Pain is a critical health problem, with over half of Americans suffering from chronic or recurrent pain. Many patients also experience comorbid depression. Although numerous self-management interventions have been implemented in an effort to improve pain outcomes, little attention has been devoted to the role of the provider of these services, typically a nurse care manager (NCM). Given the robust literature pointing to a link between physician-patient communication and patient outcomes, NCM-patient communication merits closer examination. This paper reports chronic pain patients' perceptions of the communication with NCMs in a pain self-management trial and patients' perceptions of the communication they experienced in primary care. Eighteen patients suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain and depression participated in four focus groups designed to ascertain their perceptions of the intervention. A key emergent theme from these focus groups was the contrast in patients' perceptions of the communication with their primary care physicians versus with the NCMs. Patients reported feeling supported, encouraged, and listened to by their NCMs, whereas they tended to be dissatisfied with their primary care physicians, citing issues such as lack of continuity of care, poor listening skills, and under- or overprescribing of medication. The results of this study underscore the importance of the NCM, particularly for patients with chronic conditions such as pain.

Barriers and facilitators to chronic pain self-management: a qualitative study of primary care patients with comorbid musculoskeletal pain and depression.

OBJECTIVE: To identify barriers and facilitators to self-management of chronic musculoskeletal pain among patients with comorbid pain and depression. DESIGN: A qualitative study using focus group methodology. SETTING: Veteran Affairs (VA) and University primary care clinics. PATIENTS: Recruited after participation in a clinical trial. INTERVENTION: The Stepped Care for Affective Disorders and Musculoskeletal Pain (SCAMP) trial tested an intervention of optimized antidepressant therapy combined with a pain self-management program versus usual care for primary care patients with comorbid chronic pain and depression. OUTCOME MEASURES: Thematic content analysis from focus group data was used to identify patient-perceived barriers and facilitators to self-management of chronic musculoskeletal pain. RESULTS: Patients (N = 18) were 27 to 84 years old (M = 54.8), 61% women, 72% white, and 22% black. Barriers to pain self-management included: 1) lack of support from friends and family; 2) limited resources (e.g., transportation, financial); 3) depression; 4) ineffectiveness of pain-relief strategies; 5) time constraints and other life priorities; 6) avoiding activity because of fear of pain exacerbation; 7) lack of tailoring strategies to meet personal needs; 8) not being able to maintain the use of strategies after study completion; 9) physical limitations; and 10) difficult patient-physician interactions. Facilitators to improve pain self-management included 1) encouragement from nurse care managers; 2) improving depression with treatment; 3) supportive family and friends; and 4) providing a menu of different self-management strategies to use. CONCLUSIONS: Future research is needed to confirm these findings and to design interventions that capitalize on the facilitators identified while at the same time addressing the barriers to pain self-management.

Stepped Care for Affective Disorders and Musculoskeletal Pain (SCAMP) study: design and practical implications of an intervention for comorbid pain and depression.

OBJECTIVE: Depression and pain are common comorbid conditions that have reciprocal adverse effects on disability and treatment outcomes. The objective of this article is to describe a study that tests the effectiveness of a stepped-care approach using a combined medication-behavioral intervention. METHOD: Stepped Care for Affective Disorders and Musculoskeletal Pain (SCAMP) is an NIMH-sponsored randomized clinical trial nested within a prospective cohort study. A total of 250 patients with clinically significant depression (PHQ-9 scores > or =10) and musculoskeletal pain of the lower back or legs (hip or knee) and 250 nondepressed patients with similar pain are enrolled, with baseline and serial follow-up assessments to be conducted over 12 months. The depressed patients are randomized to either a stepped-care intervention group or a usual-care control group. Stepped-care patients receive 12 weeks of optimized antidepressant management (Step 1) followed by six sessions of a pain self-management (PSM) program over the next 12 weeks (Step 2), all delivered by a nurse care manager who is supervised by a physician specialist. Approximately two thirds of the care manager contacts are by telephone. RESULTS: The target sample of 500 subjects has been successfully enrolled, and randomization of the depressed patients has resulted in balanced groups of patients with moderately severe pain and depression. Mean SCL-20 depression severity in the clinical trial group is 1.9, with most meeting DSM-IV criteria for major depression (76.3%) and the rest having dysthymia only (18.4%) or minor depression (5.3%). Pain is about equally distributed between lower back (53%) and hip or knee (47%). A rational algorithmic approach to antidepressant selection and dosing, as well as an overview of the PSM program, is provided. CONCLUSIONS: When completed, SCAMP will test whether optimized antidepressant management improves outcomes in patients with comorbid depression and pain and whether PSM produces additional benefits. The findings will be important for both primary care and mental health clinicians confronted by the prevalent depression-pain dyad.