Patients’ Experiences of Digital Health Interventions for the Self-Management of Chronic Pain: Protocol for a Systematic Review and Thematic Synthesis (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Chronic pain is a highly prevalent condition that requires multidisciplinary treatment. However, in the UK, access to specialist pain clinics where patients can receive medical multidisciplinary treatment is limited and provision varies between health boards. As such, self-management of chronic pain using digital tools has been gaining traction recently, but evidence of its effectiveness from clinical based trials focuses mainly on quantitative outcomes. Synthesising data that explore patients’ experiences with such interventions could be critical in enhancing our understanding of the way patients might benefit from engaging with digital health interventions, from a person-centred approach, but data on this are sparse. OBJECTIVE The aim of this review is to identify, appraise and synthesise qualitative evidence on patients’ experiences with a digital health intervention for the management of chronic pain. METHODS This review will consider qualitative and mixed-methods studies that explore the experience of patients (aged 18 and over) with chronic pain engaging in a digital health intervention to manage their pain. Medline Ovid, Embase, Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health Professionals (CINAHL), PsychINFO and Scopus databases will be searched for published studies. The review will be conducted in accordance with the Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (ENTREQ) guidelines. Following the 3-step thematic synthesis methodology of Thomas and Harden (2008), titles and abstracts will be screened by two independent reviewers and a third reviewer will resolve any conflict that arises before full-text screening. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist tool will be used to critically appraise the included studies. The extracted data will be imported to NVIVO where thematic synthesis will be used to derive analytical themes from the included studies. RESULTS This review is the first of its kind to identify, appraise and synthesise the experiences of patients who engage with digital health interventions to manage chronic pain. The results will enhance our understanding of what patient – centred aspects are important for digital health intervention development (need for new interventions, perceived benefits and disadvantages, usability and acceptability). CONCLUSIONS The current review will address the gap in the literature by synthesising qualitative data on chronic pain patients’ experiences with digital health interventions. The evidence from this review has the potential to inform development of future digital tools, as well as improve the uptake and continued usage of tools for the management of chronic pain. CLINICALTRIAL This review has been registered on PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42023445100).