title: Goals of Chronic Pain Management: Do Patients and Primary Care Physicians Agree and Does it Matter?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Assess patient-physician agreement on management goals for chronic musculoskeletal pain and its associations with patient and physician visit experiences.
  
  
  METHODS
  Pre-visit and post-visit questionnaires for 87 primary care visits that involved patients taking opioids for chronic musculoskeletal pain and primary care resident physicians. After each visit, patients and physicians independently ranked 5 pain treatment goals from most to least important.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In total, 48% of patients ranked reducing pain intensity as their top priority, whereas 22% ranked finding a diagnosis as most important. Physicians ranked improving function as the top priority for 41% of patients, and ranked reducing medication side effects as most important for 26%. The greatest difference between patient and physician rankings was for reducing pain intensity. In regression analyses, neither overall agreement on goals (ie, the physician's first or second priority included the patient's top priority) nor difference in patient versus physician ranking of pain intensity was significantly associated with patient-reported visit experience (β for overall agreement, -0.08; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.45 to 0.30; P=0.69; β for intensity, -0.06; 95% CI, -0.17 to 0.04; P=0.24) or physician-reported visit difficulty (β for overall agreement, 1.92; 95% CI, -2.70 to 6.55; P=0.41; β for intensity, 0.42; 95% CI, -0.87 to 1.71; P=0.53).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patients and physicians prioritize substantially different goals for chronic pain management, but there is no evidence that agreement predicts patient experience or physician-reported visit difficulty. Primary care physicians may have adapted to new recommendations that emphasize functional goals and avoidance of long-term opioid therapy, whereas patients continue to focus on reducing pain intensity.
authors.affiliation: Departments of *Internal Medicine ‡Communication and Public Health Sciences §Family and Community Medicine, University of California, Davis †University of California Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, Sacramento, CA.
authors.forename: Stephen G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Henry
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Bell
authors.forename: Joshua J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Fenton
authors.forename: Richard L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Kravitz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000701:Analgesics, Opioid / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D059350:Chronic Pain / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D059352:Musculoskeletal Pain / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000523:psychology*; D059408:Pain Management / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D058007:Physicians, Primary Care / Q000523:psychology*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
chemical_list: D000701:Analgesics, Opioid