Prescribers or Multidisciplinarians? An Evaluation of Brief Education for General Practitioners on Chronic Pain Management

Purpose Active pain self-management (PSM) for patients with chronic pain is assumed to require multidisciplinary care, leaving prescribing analgesics the most accessible option for general practitioners (GPs). We sought to upskill GPs in multimodalPSM with a harm minimisation approach for any opioid prescribing. Design and Methodology Having developed an educational training resource, a multidisciplinary team delivered the program to attendees at a GP conference in 2017. The educational package comprised pre-readings, a 6-hour interactive, skills-based workshop, and post-workshop resources. The single-group intervention was evaluated with an original and unvalidated pre/post-test (three months) survey of four domains: knowledge; attitudes; utilisation of strategies involving PSM and opioid harm minimization. Paired t-tests were conducted on each domain score and overall, with effect sizes assessed with Cohen’s d. A sensitivity analysis was performed on the data lacking a post-test survey response. Post-survey scores were imputed via chained regression equations, then paired t-tests analyses were conducted on imputed datasets using Rubin's method to pool estimates. FindingsOf 99 participants, 33 returned both surveys for primary analysis. These were combined in the sensitivity analysis with 60 unpaired surveys. Internal consistency was modest (Cronbach’s alpha 0.736). Primary analysis demonstrated significant self-reported improvements in each educational domain with overall score increasing 10.54 points out of 130 (p