Coping with chronic pain during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Conditions
- F45.41
- Registration Number
- DRKS00025525
- Lead Sponsor
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin
- Brief Summary
Purpose: COVID-19 pandemic containment measures have led to changes in various areas of life, including restrictions on health care. Patients with chronic pain may have faced an increased burden during pandemic and the resources of this vulnerable population are unknown. Therefore, a qualitative study was conducted to understand how people with chronic pain have experienced the course of the pandemic. Patients and Methods: Twenty semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted six months after the initial lockdown in Germany. The participants were patients with chronic pain who exhibited varying changes in their pain during the first German lockdown, recruited from a German outpatient pain clinic at a Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care. The semi-structured interview guidelines were designed to explore how patients with chronic pain experienced their pain during the pandemic, how they coped, and how they experienced pain management during this time. The interview recordings were transcribed verbatim and coded using the qualitative content analysis method. Results: Four themes emerged from the results: differential impact on pain experience, difficulty coping with pain, supportive pain management, and endurance. Conclusion: During this uncertain time, it was particularly important to maintain pain treatment in order to establish a sense of safety and stability. This underscores the special role of maintaining therapeutic contact during a pandemic and the potentially special role of telemedicine.
- Detailed Description
Not available
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- Complete
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 20
1. chronic pain disease
2. outpatient treatment in the university outpatient clinic for chronic pain of the Charité Berlin
1. patients unable to give consent 2. unwillingness to store and share pseudonymized disease data within the clinical project 3. employees of Charité 4. simultaneous participation in another pain study or an AMG or MPG study not approved by the study director.
Study & Design
- Study Type
- observational
- Study Design
- Not specified
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Quantitative analysis:<br>1. change in pain experience due to the COVID-19 pandemic (from the pain questionnaire of the Deutsche Schmerzgesellschaft e.V.). <br><br>Qualitative analysis:<br>Qualitative analysis of 20 telephone interviews conducted during the pandemic. <br>2. How do pain patients experience the pandemic?
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Qualitative analysis <br>1. What impact does the pandemic have on pain patients' concept of pain?<br>2. What impact does the pandemic have on pain patients' concept of illness? <br>3. What are pain patients burdened with during the pandemic? <br>4. How do pain patients experience pain management during the pandemic?<br>5. What psychological resources do pain patients use to cope with the situation?