Educational interventions, aiming to increase patients' knowledge and attitude regarding pain, can affect pain treatment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a Pain Education Programme (PEP), on adequacy of pain treatment, and to describe characteristics predicting change in adequacy. The PEP consists of a multi-method approach in which patients are educated about the basic principles regarding pain, instructed how to report pain in a pain diary, how to communicate about pain, and how to contact healthcare providers. The effects of the PEP were evaluated taking into consideration the lack of well-established outcome measures to evaluate adequacy of pain treatment, the lack of long-term follow-up, and the influence of missing data.A prospective, randomized study was utilized in which 313 chronic cancer patients were followed-up until 8 weeks postdischarge. Adequacy of pain treatment was evaluated by means of the Amsterdam Pain Management Index (APMI), consisting of an integrated score of patients' Present Pain Intensity, Average Pain Intensity, and Worst Pain Intensity, corrected for patients' Tolerable Present Pain, with the analgesics used by the patient. At pretest, 60% of the patients in the hospital were treated inadequately for their pain. Postdischarge, the control group patients were significantly more inadequately treated at 2 weeks after discharge (56% vs 41%), at 4 weeks after discharge (62% vs 42%) and at 8 weeks after discharge (57% vs 51%) than the intervention group patients. While the level of inadequacy in the control groups remained relatively stable at all assessment points, a slight increase in the percentage of patients being treated inadequately was found in the intervention group patients over time. A beneficial effect of the PEP was found for patients both with and without district nursing. Variables predicting an improvement in adequacy of pain treatment consisted of the PEP, the APMI score at baseline, patients' level of physical functioning, patients' level of social functioning, the extent of adherence to pain medication, patients' pain knowledge, and the amount of analgesics used. These findings suggest that quality of pain treatment in cancer patients with chronic pain can be enhanced by educating patients about pain and improving active participation in their own pain treatment. The benefit from the PEP, however, decreases slightly over time, pointing at a need for ongoing education.
Copyright 2001 European Federation of Chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain.