Although the "opioid contract" is widely used in the administration of chronic opioid therapy, its use has not been well defined and there are few guidelines for developing or revising such tools. We reviewed opioid contracts from 39 major academic pain centers and analyzed every statement for its core meaning. These statements were grouped into general categories and then into specific stateme...

BACKGROUND Chronic pain in childhood is increasingly being recognized as a significant clinical problem for children and their families. Previous research has identified that families want information about the causes of their child's chronic pain, treatment options, and effective strategies to help their child cope with the pain. Unfortunately, parents have reported that finding this informati...

AIM To evaluate the impact of a nurse consultant in developing a new model of care for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. BACKGROUND Patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain experience fragmented care and long waits to have their symptoms assessed [Clinical Standards Advisory Group (2000) Services for Patients with Pain. Department of Health, London]. A nurse consultant post was cr...

OBJECTIVE An application of the cognitive-behavioural model of health anxiety (hypochondriasis) to chronic pain depends on the extent to which high levels of health anxiety occur in chronic pain, which has yet to be established. METHODS The occurrence of health anxiety in consecutively recruited chronic pain patients (n=161) and nonclinical controls with (n=34) and without pain (n=70) was inv...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to examine relations among parental responses, adolescent pain coping, and pain behaviors in adolescents with chronic pain. METHODS This study included 217 adolescents (12-17 years) evaluated at a multidisciplinary pain clinic and their parents. Adolescents completed measures assessing their pain, pain coping responses, functional disability, and somatic s...

This study describes the development and validation of the Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory (NPSI), a new self-questionnaire specifically designed to evaluate the different symptoms of neuropathic pain. Following a development phase and a pilot study, we generated a list of descriptors reflecting spontaneous ongoing or paroxysmal pain, evoked pain (i.e. mechanical and thermal allodynia/hypera...

BACKGROUND To explore how chronic musculoskeletal pain is managed in multidisciplinary pain clinics for patients for whom physical interventions are inappropriate or ineffective. METHODS A qualitative study was undertaken using semi-structured interviews with twenty five members of the pain management team drawn from seven pain clinics and one pain management unit located across the UK. RES...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to examine the effects of an intervention to alter patient unpunctuality. The major hypothesis was that the intervention will change the distribution of patient unpunctuality by decreasing patient tardiness and increasing patient earliness. DESIGN Prospective Quality Improvement. SETTING Specialty Pain Clinic in suburban Baltimore, Maryland, USA. PARTI...