From the particular to the general – Clinical reasoning in the real world

From the particular to the general –
Clinical reasoning in the real world

I make no secret of my adherence to evidence-based healthcare. I think using research-based treatments, choosing from those known to be effective in a particular group of people in a specific context helps provide better healthcare. But I also recognise problems with this approach: people in clinical practice do not look like the “average” patient. That means using a cookie cutter, or algorithm as a way to reduce uncertainty in practice doesn’t, in my humble opinion, do much for the unique person in front of me.

I’ve been reading Trisha Greenhalgh’s recent paper “Of lamp posts, keys, and fabled drunkards: A perspectival tale of 4 guidelines”, where she describes her experience of receiving treatment based on the original description given for her “fall”. The “fall” was a high-impact cycle accident with subsequent limb fractures, and at age 55 years, she was offered a “falls prevention” treatment because she’d been considered “an older person with a fall”. Great guidelines practice – wrong application!

Greenhalgh goes on to say “we should avoid using evidence-based guidelines in the manner of the fabled drunkard who searched under the lamp post for his keys because that was where the light was – even though he knew he’d lost his key somewhere else”

Greenhalgh (2018), quoting Sir John Grimley Evans

When someone comes to see us in the clinic, our first step is to ask “what can I do for you?” or words to that effect. What we’re looking for is the person’s “presenting symptoms”, with some indication of the problem we’re dealing with. Depending on our clinical model, we may be looking for a diagnostic label “rheumatoid arthritis” or a problem “not sleeping until three hours after I go to bed”.

What we do next is crucial: We begin by asking more questions… but when we do, what questions do we ask?

Do we follow a linear pattern recognition path, where we hypothesise that “rheumatoid arthritis” is the problem and work to confirm our hypothesis?

Our questions might therefore be: “tell me about your hands, where do they hurt?” and we’ll be looking for bilateral swelling and perhaps fatigue and family history and any previous episodes.

Or do we expand the range of questions, and try to understand the path this person took to seek help: How did you decide to come and see me now? Why me? Why now?

Our questions might then be: “what do you think is going on? what’s bothering you so much?”

Different narratives for different purposes

Greenhalgh reminds us of Lonergan (a Canadian philosopher), as described by Engebretsen and colleagues (2015), where clinical enquiry is described as a complicated process (sure is!) of 4 overlapping, intertwined phases: (a) data collection – of self reported sensations, observations, otherwise known as “something is wrong and needs explaining”; (b) data interpreting “what might this mean?” by synthesising the data and working to recognise possible answers, or understanding; (c) weighing up alternative interpretations by judging; and (d) deciding what to do next, “what is the right thing to do”, or deliberation.

Engebretsen and colleagues emphasise the need to work from information from the individual to general models or diagnoses (I’d call this abductive reasoning), and argue that this process in the clinic should be “reflexive” and “informed by scientific evidence” but warn that scientific evidence can’t be replaced simply by reflexive approaches.

The reason for conceptualising clinical reasoning in this way is that a narrative primarily based on confirming a suspicion will likely reduce the number of options, narrow the range of options considered, and if it’s focused on diagnosis, may well over-ride the person’s main concern. A person may seek help, not because he or she wants a name or even treatment, but because of worries about work, the impact on family, or fears it could be something awful. And without directly addressing those main concerns, all the evidence-based treatments in the world will not help.

Guidelines and algorithms

Guidelines, as many people know, are an amalgamation of RCT’s and usually assembled by an esteemed group of experts in an attempt to reduce unintended consequences of following poorly reasoned treatment. They’re supposed to be used to guide treatment,  supporting clinical reasoning with options that, within a particular population, should optimise outcomes.

Algorithms are also assembled by experts and aim to provide a clinical decision-making process where, by following the decision tree, clinicians end up providing appropriate and effective treatment.

I suppose as a rather idiosyncratic and noncomformist individual, I’ve bitterly complained that algorithms fail to acknowledge the individual; they simplify the clinical reasoning process to the point where the clinician may not have to think critically about why they’re suggesting what they’re suggesting. At the same time I’ve been an advocate of guidelines – can I be this contrary?!

Here’s the thing: if we put guidelines in their rightful place, as a support or guide to help clinicians choose useful treatment options, they’re helpful. They’re not intended to be applied without first carefully assessing the person – listening to their story, following the four-step process of data collection, data interpretation, judging alternatives, and deciding on what to do.

Algorithms are also intended to support clinical decision-making, but not replace it! I think, however, that algorithms are more readily followed… it’s temptingly easy to go “yes” “no” and make a choice by following the algorithm rather than going back to the complex and messy business of obtaining, synthesising, judging and deciding.

Perhaps it’s time to replace the term “subjective” in our assessment process. Subjective has notions of “biased”, “emotional”, “irrational”; while objective implies “impartial”, “neutral”, “dispassionate”, “rational”. Perhaps if we replaced these terms with the more neutral terms “data collection” or “interview and clinical testing” we might treat what the person says as the specific – and only then move to the general to see if the general fits the specific, not the other way around.

 

Engebretsen, E., Vøllestad, N. K., Wahl, A. K., Robinson, H. S., & Heggen, K. (2015). Unpacking the process of interpretation in evidence‐based decision making. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 21(3), 529-531.

Greenhalgh, T. (2018). Of lamp posts, keys, and fabled drunkards: A perspectival tale of 4 guidelines. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 24(5), 1132-1138. doi:doi:10.1111/jep.12925

Myths about exposure therapy

Exposure therapy is an effective approach for pain-related anxiety, fear and avoidance, but exposure therapy is used less often than other evidence-based treatments, there is a great deal of confusion about graded exposure, and when it is used, it is not always well-conducted. It’s not a treatment to be used by every therapist – some of us need to challenge our own beliefs about pain, and whether it’s OK to go “into” the pain a little, or even slightly increase pain temporarily!

Below are some common misconceptions and suggestions for how to overcome them:

Misconception: Exposure therapy causes clients undue distress and has adverse consequences.

Suggestions: Although exposure therapy can lead to temporary increases in anxiety and pain, it is important to remember that these symptoms are not dangerous, and that exposure is generally carried out in a very gradual and predictable way. Exposure very rarely causes clients harm, but it is important to know your clients’ medical histories. For example, a client with a respiratory condition would not be asked to complete an exposure designed to elicit hyperventilation.

I usually begin with a really clear explanation for using this approach, basing my explanation on what the person has already said to me. By using Socratic or guided discovery, I try to understand the logic behind the person’s fear: what is it the person is most worried about? Often it’s not hurt or harm, it’s worrying that they won’t sleep, or they’ll have a flare-up that will last a looooong time – and they won’t be able to handle it. These are fundamental fears about having pain and vital to work through if the person is going to need to live with persistent pain for any length of time.

Once I’ve understood the person’s reasons for being bothered by the movements and pain, then I work on developing some coping strategies. These must be carefully carried out because it’s so easy to inadvertently coach people into using “safety behaviours” or “cues” that work to limit their contact with the full experience. Things like breath control, positive self-statements, any special ways of moving, or even ways of recovering after completing the task may serve to control or reduce contact with both anxiety and pain. I typically draw on mindfulness because it helps people focus on what IS happening, not what may have happened in the past – or may happen in the future. By really noticing what comes up before, during and after a graded exposure task, and being willing to experience them as they are, people can recognise that anticipating what might happen is often far worse than what does happen.

Finally, I’ll work through the scenario’s – either pictures of movements and activities, or descriptions of the same things. I prefer photographs (based on the Photographs of Daily Activity), because these elicit all the contextual details such as the other people, weather, flooring or surface and so on that are often factors increasing a person’s concerns. We begin with the activity that least bothers the person and consistently work up from there, with practice in the real world between sessions. I’ll go out to the places the person is most concerned about, we’ll do it together at first, then the person can carry on by themselves afterwards.

Misconception: Exposure therapy undermines the therapeutic relationship and leads to high dropout.

Suggestions: If you give your person a clear reason for using this approach and deliver it well,  the person is more likely to achieve success – and this in turn strengthens your relationship. Additionally, there is evidence that dropout rates for exposure are comparable to other treatments.

There is something about achieving a difficult thing that bonds us humans, and if you approach graded exposure with compassion, curiosity, and celebration, you may find your relationship is far more rewarding and deeper than if you simply prescribe the same old same old.

Misconception: Exposure therapy can lead to lawsuits against therapists.

Suggestions: Survey data suggest that lawsuits against therapists using exposure are extremely rare. As with any kind of therapy, you can take several steps to protect yourself from a legal standpoint. Don’t forget to obtain informed consent, ensure your treatment is delivered with competency, professionalism, and ethical consideration.

The best book/resource by far for graded exposure is Pain-Related Fear: Exposure-Based Treatment for Chronic Pain, (click) by Johan W.S. Vlaeyen, Stephen J. Morley, Steven J. Linton, Katja Boersma, and Jeroen de Jong.

Before you begin carrying out this kind of treatment, check you have these skills (from the book I’ve referenced):

Vlaeyen, Johan, Morley, Stephen, Linton, Steven, Boersma, Katja, & de Jong, Jeroen. (2012a). Pain-related Fear. Seattle: IASP Press.

Assessing problems with sleep and pain – ii

Last week I wrote about my approach to assessing sleep problems in those with persistent pain. As an ex-insomniac I’ve spent a while learning about sleep so I can understand what’s going on, and why sleep can be such a problem. In this week’s post I want to dig a little deeper into what’s going on with poor sleep, as well as some of the unique features of sleep in people experiencing persistent pain.

Having reviewed the five main areas that are fundamental (and can/should be assessed by anyone working with people who experience persistent pain), the next area I want to look at with people is mood. There are two primary psychopathological contributors to poor sleep: the first we’ve dealt with last week (Question 4 – what’s going through your mind…) which is by far and away the most common initiator and maintainer of insomnia, and it doesn’t even need to be a diagnosable anxiety disorder! The second, you’ll probably have guessed, is depression.

Depression is common in people with both rotten sleep and ongoing pain (Boakye, Olechowski, Rashiq, Verrier, Kerr, Witmans et al, 2016), and there are some suggestions that pain and depression may be related and similar neurobiological processes may be involved for both (increased limbic activity being one of them). In depression, there is increased activity in the HPA Axis, reduced BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), and reduced 5HT with increased pro-inflammatory cytokines . In persistent pain, there may be activity in the HPA Axis, there is certainly reduced BDNF except in the spinal cord, and reduced 5HT, along with increased pro-inflammatory cytokines. And in sleep disturbances there is also increased activity in the HPA Axis, redced BDNF, reduced 5HT and guess what… increased pro-inflammatory cytokines. And all three interact with one another so that if you happen to be depressed, you’re more likely to experience pain that goes on, and your sleep will also reduce your mood and increase your pain. And the reverse. All very messy indeed!.

What this means is that assessing for low mood and the impact on sleep is important – if someone’s describing waking well before they usually do, in the wee small hours (anywhere from 3 – 5am if they usually wake at 7.00am) I’m ready to screen for low mood. To be honest I always assess for that anyway! Depression is also associated with low motivation and loss of “get up and go” so this is likely to interact with poor sleep, creating a very tired person.

There are three other very important aspects of sleep I like to assess for: sleep apnoea, where someone stops breathing for seconds to minutes at a time, often snorting awake, and this may be associated with snoring and daytime sleepiness. Often the person won’t be aware of their sleep apnoea, so it can be helpful for a bed-partner to let you know whether this is a feature of your patient’s sleep.

The next are a group of movement disorders of sleep, many of which are associated with the third area I assess, which are medications.

Movement disorders of sleep include restless leg syndrome – that feeling of absolutely having to move the legs, usually at night, and relieved by getting up to walk around, but in doing so, making it difficult to sleep. Another is periodic limb movement disorder of sleep, which can be every 5 – 30 seconds of leg twitching all night long, and in some cases, whole body twitching though this is less frequent and less rhythmic. This latter problem may not be noticed by the person – but their bed-mate will know about it! – and this problem may be associated with both sleep apnoea and restless leg, AND some doses of antidepressants. Another common contributor to these problems is low iron levels – worth checking both iron and medications!

Finally with medications, I like to understand not only what the person is taking, but also when they’re taking them. Several points are important here: some medications are usually sedating such as tricyclic antidepressants but in some people nortriptyline can paradoxically increase alertness! If that’s the case, timing the dose is really important and should be discussed with either the prescribing doctor, or a clinical pharmacist. Opioids depress respiration (ie slow breathing down) so can be problematic if the person has sleep apnoea AND is taking opioids, the drive to inhale may be less, causing more frequent and deeper periods without breathing normally. For restless legs and periodic limb movement disorder, some antidepressants (venlafaxine is one of them) in high doses can cause the twitching and once the dose is reduced, this fades away, at least a bit.  There is a very small amount of research suggesting that NSAIDs can influence sleep quality in some people also.

The effects of poor sleep are many: anything from micro-sleeps during the day (problematic while driving or operating machinery!), to more irritability, sluggish responses, less concentration and more difficulty solving problems. Pain is associated with more frequent micro-wakenings during the night (Bjurstrom & Irwin, 2016) but findings with respect to whether deep sleep, REM sleep or light sleep were consistently more affected weren’t clear.

Having completed my assessment, more or less, I can also use a few pen and paper measures: Wolff’s Morning Questions (Wolff, 1974), Kryger’s Subjective Measurements (1991), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Bysse, Reynolds, Monk et al, 1989) and the Sleep Disturbance Questionnaire (Domino, Blair,& Bridges, 1984) are all useful. Speaking to the partner is an excellent idea because I don’t know about you but I never snore but my partner swears I do! Who do you believe?!

People experiencing insomnia are not very reliable when describing their own sleep habits – we’re terrible at noticing when we’re actually asleep or awake in those early stages of sleep, so we typically think we’ve slept less than we actually have. We also do a whole lot of things to avoid not sleeping – and these can actually prolong and extend our sleeplessness!

We’ll discuss what to do about the factors you may have identified in your sleep assessment in next week’s instalment, but you can rest assured it’s not crucial for you to do anything yourself about some things. For example, if someone has sleep apnoea, referring for a sleep study is important, but not something YOU need to do! But please make sure a referral is suggested to someone who can make it happen. Similarly with medications and sleep movement disorders, it’s not something you should tackle on your own – please discuss managing these with a specialist sleep consultant, psychiatrist, or the person’s own GP. Mood problems – treat as you would any time you find someone with a mood problem.

Next week – off to the Land of Nod: A roadmap?!

 

Boakye, P. A., Olechowski, C., Rashiq, S., Verrier, M. J., Kerr, B., Witmans, M., . . . Dick, B. D. (2016). A critical review of neurobiological factors involved in the interactions between chronic pain, depression, and sleep disruption. The Clinical Journal of Pain, 32(4), 327-336.

Buysse DJ, Reynolds CF 3rd, Monk TH, et al. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: a new instrument for psychiatric practice and research. Psychiatry Res 1989; 28(2):193–213.

Domino G, Blair G, Bridges A. Subjective assessment of sleep by Sleep Questionnaire. Percept Mot Skills 1984;59(1):163–70.

Kryger MH, Steljes D, Pouliot Z, et al. Subjective versus objective evaluation of hypnotic efficacy: experience with zolpidem. Sleep 1991;14(5):399–407.

Moul DE, Hall M, Pilkonis PA, et al. Self-report measures of insomnia in adults: rationales, choices, and needs. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2004;8(3):177–98.

Wolff BB. Evaluation of hypnotics in outpatients with insomnia using a questionnaire and a self-rating technique. Clin Pharmacol Ther 1974;15(2):130–40.

Assessing problems with sleep & persistent pain

Problems with sleep affect most of us from time to time. We know we might find it difficult to get off to sleep because of a busy mind, a different bedroom, changes to our schedule – but for most of us, sleep returns to our normal fairly quickly. For some of us, though, sleep problems continue for weeks, months or even years. And for people living with persistent pain, sleep can be one of the most difficult things to deal with, yet it’s also one of the most common (McCracken & Iverson, 2002). Studies of sleep problems in people with fibromyalgia show abnormal sleep continuity as well as changes in sleep architecture – this looks like increased number of times waking, a reduced amount of slow wave sleep and an abnormal alpha wave intrusion in non rapid eye movement, termed alpha-delta sleep (Dauvilliers & Touchon, 2001). People with fibromyalgia may also experience primary sleep disorder such as sleep apnoea or periodic leg movements during sleep.

The effect of rotten sleep is quite clear: pain increases the day following a disrupted night’s sleep, while high levels of pain on one day has less of an impact on subsequent sleep – but if you’ve been sleeping poorly for a while, all of this becomes something of a blur (Johnson, Weber, McCrae & Craggs, 2017; Slavish, Graham-Engeland, Martire & Smyth, 2017)! When we add in the effects of poor sleep on daily activity, and begin to unpack the relationships between sleep, pain and mood (Goerlitz, Sturgeron, Mackey & Darnell, 2017) well it’s a bit of a complicated matter, and one that I think we need to address when someone comes in for help with their pain.

Assessing unrefreshing sleep or poor sleep can be a reasonably straightforward process, but it needs to be carried out systematically. The event/s that initiate poor sleep may be very different from the events that maintain poor sleep, and while it’s interesting to know what started the sleep difficulties – in the end it’s possibly more important to work out what’s maintaining it.

The following is my attempt to outline what I look for when I’m discussing sleep with someone.

1. Is sleep really a problem? Sounds a bit odd, but some people have a strong belief that they need a certain number of hours of sleep a night, and when they’re not getting that magical number, it can be quite worrying – and actually kick off a sleep problem!

• My key question here is do you wake feeling like you’ve had a good sleep? The number of hours of sleep is irrelevant, to a large extent, if you wake up feeling refreshed. If the person I’m talking to wakes up feeling OK I quickly swing into trying to understand why they’re worried about their sleep – and reassuring them that having a certain sleep duration is not fixed. In fact, sleep length changes over time – remember when you were a kid and slept for hours and hours? And when you were a teen and sleep in until midday if you could, but stayed up most of the night? These are pretty normal changes in pattern and nothing to worry about.

If you don’t feel refreshed, then I dig a little deeper…

2. What’s your sleep routine? This is about finding out the time someone goes to bed, how long it takes to fall asleep, what time a person wakes up, and gets up. I’ll also ask about the pre-bedtime routine: what’s the evening routine like? when do the screens go off? what’s the last drink of the evening? what’s the bedroom environment like?

• I’m looking for a consistent bedtime at around the same time each night, a “wind down” ritual where the same things happen each night to prime the mind for sleep. I’m also looking for factors that might make it more difficult to fall asleep once in bed – screen time (devices, laptops, TV), dealing with worries, solving problems, having arguments, difficulty getting comfortable.
• I’m also looking for a consistent wake up time, and whether the person gets out of bed then – or lies in bed and maybe falls asleep again…
• A comfortable room temperature, a dark room, relatively little noise: all of these very basic things help keep bed for sleep (and sex) but not for much else.

The reason these basic “sleep hygiene” factors help is that our sleep pattern is malleable. It changes depending on environmental factors like light, noise and temperature. This is why we end up having jetlag – it takes a little while to adjust to the new daily light patterns (especially when you travel from Christchurch, NZ to somewhere like Norway!). Our body temperature drops during the night, our digestive processes slow down (that’s why we tend not to do “number twos” at night) and why we pee a lot less at night than during the day. Setting up a consistent routine helps us retain these habits and “teach” the mind/body to sleep at the correct time.

3. What substances do you use? I’m interested in the usual suspects: caffeine (not only coffee, but tea, energy drinks, dark chocolate), but also alcohol, the timing of medications, and that late night snack.

• When sleep onset is a bit fragile it’s probably best not to have coffee and allied substances after mid-afternoon, and for some people (like me!) it’s best not to have them after lunch.
• Medications for persistent pain are often sedating, so people need to know how to use this side effect for the best – and that often means taking medications earlier than first thought.
• It also means for us, recognising that some medications alter sleep architecture (particularly meds given for, paradoxically, insomnia!). Alcohol might help people get to sleep but it changes the sleep architecture, preventing you from falling into that deepest sleep phase – and waking you up to pee halfway through the night, if you don’t do that already!
• I also check whether people are smokers, and if they are, whether they wake in the morning absolutely gasping for a smoke, or whether they smoke during the night. Nicotine withdrawal can keep someone awake during those brief periods before and after dreaming sleep, so may need to be managed with patches.
• Food is also something I check – snacks at midnight are the stuff of school stories, but can become a learned behaviour that we associate with being awake at that time, and maintain disrupted sleep. Maybe a mid-evening protein-based snack is a better option.

4. What’s going through your mind (or what’s your mind telling you) about your sleep? Having hopefully dealt with the basics of sleep hygiene (though I haven’t included exercise yet – that’s coming!), I’m keen to understand the person’s mind chatter about their sleep.

• Worries, rumination and attempts at problem-solving (yes I’ve solved the problem of world peace!) can all keep us from falling asleep. What we do about those thoughts depends on the sleep management approach we’re using.
• Often, the worries are actually worries about not sleeping – that paradoxically keep us from falling asleep! Feeling bothered about “how am I going to cope tomorrow if I don’t sleep”, or “I’m going to be so tired tomorrow, I know I won’t manage” are really common.
• Along with worries about not sleeping, every other unsolved problem seems to pop up courtesy of your mind – this can happen because the person is too busy during the day to stop and ponder (and it’s quiet at night… fewer distractions!) so it’s worth finding out what is going through the person’s mind and dealing with those issues.

5. What’s your pattern of sleeping through the night? This is about the pattern of arousals – when, how long for, what the person does during these times.

• Some understanding of normal sleep architecture is useful here so you can help the person understand why waking just before/just after dreams occurs.
• Reviewing the habits at these times helps to understand the factors that maintains being awake at the wrong times! Waking briefly but without being aware of it is normal, but when internal or external factors intrude during lighter periods of sleep, we become more aware of being awake and can begin to do things that keep us awake, like watching TV, turning the radio on, having a snack, worrying.

To be continued…

These are some of the very fundamentals of assessing sleep problems. Next week I’ll review some more – and the week after look at strategies that can help!

 

Dauvilliers, Y., & Touchon, J. (2001). Le sommeil du fibromyalgique : Revue des données cliniques et polygraphiques (sleep in fibromyalgia patients: Clinical and polysomnography pattern.). Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology, 31(1), 18-33. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0987-7053(00)00240-9

Goerlitz, D., Sturgeron, J., Mackey, S., & Darnall, B. (2017). (395) sleep quality and positive affect as mediators of daily relationship between pain intensity and physical activity. The Journal of Pain, 18(4), S73.

Johnson, M., Weber, J., McCrae, C., & Craggs, J. (2017). (397) the catch 22 of insomnia and chronic pain: Exploring how insomnia and sleep impact the neural correlates of chronic pain. The Journal of Pain, 18(4), S73-S74.

McCracken, L. M., & Iverson, G. L. (2002). Disrupted sleep patterns and daily functioning in patients with chronic pain. Pain Research & Management, 7(2), 75-79.

Slavish, D., Graham-Engeland, J., Martire, L., & Smyth, J. (2017). (394) bidirectional associations between daily pain, affect, and sleep quality in young adults with and without chronic back pain. The Journal of Pain, 18(4), S73.

When it hurts – but it’s important to keep doing

To date, despite years of research and billions of dollars, there is no satisfactory way to reduce pain in all people. In fact, our pain reduction treatments for many forms of persistent pain are pretty poor whether we look at pharmaceuticals, surgery, psychological treatments or even exercise. What this means is there are a lot of disillusioned and frustrated people in our communities – yet life carries on, and people do keep doing!

In an effort to understand what might help people who don’t “find a cure”, researchers and clinicians have been looking at mediators. Mediators are factors that explain a relationship between two variables. In the study I’m examining today, the predictor is pain intensity, and the criterion variable is participating in valued life activities (the things we want or need to do). The research question was whether self-efficacy and/or pain acceptance mediated engaging in valued life activities.

Ahlstrand, Vaz, Falkmer, Thyberg and Bjork (2017) used a cross-sectional study to explore relationships between the variables above in a group of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), drawn from three rheumatology registers in South East Sweden. Participants were required to have confirmed RA; be between 18 – 80 years; have had RA for four years or more; and have data included in the quality register – a total of 737 people agreed to take part (from a total of 1277 meeting entry criteria).

The researchers used the Swedish versions of Health Assessment Questionnaire (Wolfe, 1989) to establish degree of difficulty in daily activities, as well as the Valued Life Activities scale (Katz, Morris & Yellin, 2006); the Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale (Lorig, Chastain, Ung, Shoor & Holman, 1989); and the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire (Wicksell, Olsson & Melin, 2009).
The statistical analyses included Chi-square tests of independence to identify significant differences in categorical factors due to gender, and steps were taken to establish whether there were gender differences for pain acceptance, self-efficacy and valued life activities. Pearson correlations were used to explore the relationships between acceptance, self efficacy and the valued life activities summary score, and then univariate regressions were undertaken to test each individual factor (eg pain, pain acceptance and self efficacy on valued life activities). Then, only the significant contributors in univariate analyses where entered into the hierarchical linear regression models. The tests were to establish whether self-efficacy would predict valued life activities after acceptance and pain scores were considered.

Finally, structural equation modelling was used to examine the contribution and influence of pain, activity engagement and self-efficacy on difficulties performing valued life activities. A note here: The authors used the structure of the ICF model to name the constructs in their structural equation model.

What did they find?

The people who responded to this survey tended to be less active than those who were on the registers but didn’t respond, so we need to keep this in mind when we interpret their results. They found that women reported slightly more pain than men, but there were no differences between men and women on all measures except that men scored more highly on the symptom control subscale of the self-efficacy measure. A point to note here is that, unlike the Pain Self Efficacy Questionaire, this measure includes attempts to reduce or control pain and/or disability, so it’s a slightly different construct from the PSEQ which measures confidence to engage in doing things despite the pain.

In terms of pain, pain acceptance, and arthritis self-efficacy, there were low to moderate associations between these and engaging in valued life activities. In fact, all pain acceptance and self-efficacy constructs measured in this study were associated with performing valued life activities. In other words, when people are confident, and willing to do things and engage in activities despite pain, the more valued activities they actually do. In fact, one of the more striking findings was a negative relationship between activity engagement and performing valued life activities – those with lower activity engagement scores reported great difficult engaging in what was important to them (not especially surprising given that both scales are about doing what’s important and getting on with life).

Now for the really geeky model: structural equation modeling found a rather complex relationship between all the variables – so complex I’m going to include the diagram.

What does it show? Well, there’s a relationship between pain intensity and valued activity engagement – the more pain, the less people do what’s important. BUT this is mediated by “personal factors” (remember the ICF labels). These personal factors are the pain acceptance activity engagement, self-efficacy for pain and self-efficacy for symptoms. Interestingly, pain willingness, the other subscale on the pain acceptance scale, wasn’t correlated.

Or is it surprising? To my mind there are some interesting conceptual issues with this study. Firstly, in a group that is self-selected and represents slightly more disability than those who didn’t respond, it’s not surprising that pain intensity and disability were correlated. This is something we see often pre-treatment in chronic pain settings. It’s also no surprise to me that the Arthritis self-efficacy scales were associated with valued activities, and with activity engagement – the arthritis self-efficacy scales ask “How certain are you that you can decrease your pain quite a bit?”; “How certain are you that you can that you can make a small-to moderate reduction in your arthritis pain by using methods other than taking extra medication?” amongst other questions. These suggest that pain reduction is a primary aim in arthritis management. The Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire, however, is a very different beast. The Activity Engagement scale is about doing things that are valued (similar to the Valued Life Activity scale), while the  Willingness scale is about being willing to live life again despite pain – for example “I am getting on with the business of living no matter what my level of pain is.”; “It’s not necessary for me to control my pain in order to handle my life well.”.

While the authors argue that this study shows the value of self efficacy, stating “Active management promotes a sense of confidence, or self-efficacy, for dealing with pain that is associated with improved participation in daily activities and wellbeing.” I think the Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale’s focus on controlling pain and other symptoms is incompatible with the constructs implied in the CPAQ. The ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) approach to pain is, as I’ve mentioned many times, a focus on engaging in valued activities irrespective of pain intensity – a more achievable goal for many than becoming confident to reduce pain as the ASES measures.

To their credit, the authors also indicate that men and women who continue to experience pain despite optimal medical treatment might benefit from strategies to increase their confidence to manage their own symptoms – but that a focus on pain control instead of participation despite pain is probably unhelpful. They go on to say that “by focusing on pain aceptance and activity engagement despite pain, self-management strategies may change the focus from pain control to a more flexible engagement in valued activities.” I couldn’t agree more – and I wish they’d used the Pain Self Efficacy Questionnaire instead of the ASES in this study. Maybe we need more discussion about appropriate measures in rheumatology research.

 

Ahlstrand, I., Vaz, S., Falkmer, T., Thyberg, I., & Björk, M. (2017). Self-efficacy and pain acceptance as mediators of the relationship between pain and performance of valued life activities in women and men with rheumatoid arthritis. Clinical Rehabilitation, 31(6), 824-834. doi:10.1177/0269215516646166

Katz PP, Morris A and Yelin EH. (2006). Prevalence and predictors of disability in valued life activities among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis. Annals of Rheumatology Diseases. 65: 763–769.

Lorig K, Chastain RL, Ung E, Shoor S and Holman HR. (1989). Development and evaluation of a scale to measure perceived self-efficacy in people with arthritis. Arthritis & Rheumatism, 32(1): 37–44.

Wicksell RK, Olsson GL and Melin L. (2009). The Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire (CPAQ)-further validation including a confirmatory factor analysis and a comparison with the Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia. European Journal of Pain, 13: 760–768.

Wolfe F. (1989). A brief clinical health assessment instrument: CLINHAQ. Arthritis & Rheumatism,  32 (suppl): S9

Do pain management programmes really influence “doing” in daily life?

Disability and coping are two of the most important targets in persistent pain management, along with distress and pain intensity (the latter perhaps being the most difficult to influence). A question, however, is whether existing measures of disability truly capture the activities or occupations that people most value. For example, if house cleaning is just not my thing, even if my functioning improved over the course of a programme, would I choose to spend that new capability on vacuum-cleaning or out there in the garden?!

The Westhaven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI)(Kerns, Turk & Rudy, 1985)  is a true workhorse of pain management measurement: It’s a measure that provides, via the subscales, an estimate of the complex inter-relationships involved in pain-related disability and distress. Three profiles of coping approach have been derived from the MPI indicating “Adaptive Coping” – the person is likely to continue to improve and engage in living well if they carry on as they are; “Interpersonally Distressed” – the person is experiencing difficulties with relationships and is feeling unsupported by others around them; and “Dysfunctional” – the person is struggling with their pain, and both disability and distress can feel overwhelming.

But the disability components of the MPI don’t really indicate the kinds of activities that people might be passionate about – or those that are relevant to their lives. The items are about general activities people “typically” do – in a North American setting. I know they’ve been validated in many different populations but they still represent a general idea of activity and function rather than the unique and idiosyncratic occupations that people do. (What's the difference? An occupation is the unique way I perform the important tasks of my day - the way I dash around the house while simultaneously cleaning my teeth, getting the dogs outside, making sure the curtains are opened and the appliances off just before I head out the door! We could call this "getting ready for work" but the way I do it, and the way you do it is probably very different!)

Why is that important? Well, because people value different occupations differently, and because values drive motivation, a broad measure of disability may not capture the true value of a pain management programme. And this is why the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) (Law, Baptiste, McColl, Opzoomer, Polatajko & Pollock, 1990) is often used by occupational therapists to establish exactly what it is a person wants to be able to do. Goal Attainment Scaling is another option.

The study

In this study by Persson, Eklund, Lexell & Rivano-Fischer (2017), the aims were to assess longterm changes in MPI profiles over the course of a year; to look at associations between “Adaptive Coper” profiles at follow-up and improvements in occupational performance; and to look at factors at baseline that might be used to predict changes over time. Participants were, as usual, attending a tertiary pain management centre at a University hospital. They took part in a 21 day programme (oh the luxury of time!), and were seen by a team working together (oh the luxury of a co-located team!) including a psychologist, physician, physiotherapist, occupational therapist and social worker (oh for interprofessional teamwork!). The measures taken at pre and post were the MPI, COPM, and background demographic details.

Now here’s where the analysis gets pretty technical: dropout rates and pre-treatment differences amongst the MPI profiles were analysed using Matt-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, chi-squared and independent t-test. Cross-tabs were used to describe the distribution of the MPI profiles. McNemar’s test was used to assess changes over time on each of the four profiles, and ultimately the participants were grouped into four profiles: never AC (Adaptive coper); losing AC; gaining AC, and stable AC, and these groupings were used to analyse associations between changes in MPI profile and changes on COPM from baseline to follow-up. And this, folks, is why occupational therapists NEED to learn statistical analyses! Because they went on to use univariate and multivariate logistic regressions to see whether demographic factors would predict these profiles at follow-up, incorporating satisfaction and performance scores on COPM.

What did they find?

More participants started the programme with a profile of dsyfunctional or interpersonally distressed than adaptive coper – and at both discharge and follow-up the adaptive coping group increased to be the largest subgroup. 20% of the participants ended up in the “gaining AC” group, 11% the “stable AC” group, 6% formed the “losing AC” group, and 63% were never in the adaptive coping group at all. Not so terrific in terms of broad outcome measures, but pretty consistent with other programmes around the world.

On the more individualised outcome measure of the COPM, people in the never AC group showed least clinically relevant improvement, both the stable AC and gaining AC groups showed more improvement on occupational performance and satisfaction with performance than the never AC group, while the stable AC group improved more than the losing AC group in terms of occupational performance changes.

Long-term changes showed those who started as AC were more likely to stay that way over time, and baseline scores for occupational performance were significantly associated with being AC at follow-up – in other words, people who felt OK about what they could do in terms of occupation, tended to become more capable and less disabled over time as measured by the MPI. More importantly, those people who had higher baseline scores on occupational satisfaction were 1.3 times more likely to shift to the AC group over time. “Clinically relevant improvements on performance and satisfaction with performance at 1-year follow-up, in occupations prioritized by the participants, were associated with having an AC profile at follow-up.” (p. 6).

Confidence in doing important occupations breeds confidence in other parts of living with persistent pain.

What does this all mean anyway?

Well, importantly, people who shifted from one of the other profiles to adaptive coping over a year showed clinically relevant improvements in occupational performance and satisfaction with performance – the authors suggest these findings show improvements on and satisfaction with “doing and performing” important occupations. Not being classified into adaptive coping at any time was associated with least improvement in occupational performance and satisfaction. There is an association between “doing/performing” and “coping/adapting” that hasn’t really been studied. Perhaps starting with things people enjoy instead of beating them over the head with things they’ve never been interested in could improve pain management outcomes. Pain management programmes DO influence doing in real life – if real life doing is used as therapy!

The authors also point out that “30–47% of participants who did not show an AC profile at follow-up still showed clinically relevant improvements on occupational performance and on
satisfaction with occupational performance.” (p. 8) This suggests that the MPI coping profiles only represent one part of the outcomes that are important to individuals: occupation being the individualised daily doings that people value very highly, and pointing to the need to explore individualised outcome measurement in more studies. Given that patient-centred pain management is based on individual goals, using only generic measures is likely to give misleading outcomes about treatment efficacy.

 

Kerns IVRD,TurkDC, Rudy TE. (1985) West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (WHYMPI). Pain. 23:345–56

Law M, Baptiste S, McColl M, Opzoomer A, Polatajko H, Pollock N. (1990). The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure: an outcome measure for occupational therapy. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy. 57(2), pp82–7.

Persson, E., Eklund, M., Lexell, J., & Rivano-Fischer, M. (2017). Psychosocial coping profiles after pain rehabilitation: Associations with occupational performance and patient characteristics. Disability and Rehabilitation: An International, Multidisciplinary Journal, 39(3), 251-260.

The gap in managing pain

If you’ve read my blog for any period of time you’ll know that I like practical research, and research that helps clinicians do what they do with humanity, compassion and evidence. One really enormous gap in the field is rarely mentioned: how do clinicians pull their assessment findings together and use them for clinical reasoning? Especially if you’re part of an interprofessional team (or work in a biopsychosocial framework). The silence in the pain literature is deafening!

There are any number of articles on what can be included in an initial assessment, most of them based on the idea that if factor X is an important predictor, it oughta be assessed. So we have a proliferation of assessments across (mainly) the biopsychological spectrum, with a teeny tiny bit of social (family relationships) thrown in, if you’re lucky. There are numerous papers proposing treatments for aspects of pain – anything from medications, to movement treatments, to cognitive treatments (yes, pain education), and behavioural treatments – but after reading them it almost feels like authors think anyone with pain that’s going on longer than we’d hope “should” have That Treatment, and then of course the person will be just fine.

Except that – there are just as many people with persistent pain today as there were 20 years ago, perhaps more (given the global burden of disease shows that low back pain is The Most Common problem associated with years lived with disability). In other words, all our treatments across all our specialties don’t seem to be having the impact that the research papers suggest they ought to. What gives?

I think it’s time to take a leaf from some of the better-conducted pharmacological studies. Yes, I said that! What I mean is that given our treatments especially for low back pain seem to have broadly the same or similar effects, maybe we need to look beyond the grouped analyses where individual differences are lost within the grouped data, and head to some of the sub-analyses proposed and used by Moore, Derry, Eccleston & Kalso (2013). In this paper, they advocate using responder analysis – who, exactly, gets a good result?

At the same time, I think we need to get much better at assembling, integrating and using the multitude of assessments people complete for us when we start treating them. Several points here: yes, we all carry out assessment but how well do we put them together to “tell the story” or generate a set of hypotheses to explain the crucial questions:

Why is this person presenting in this way at this time? And what can be done to reduce distress and disability?

I think case formulations may take us a step towards better use of our assessments, better clinical reasoning, better teamwork, and, most of all, better collaboration with the person we hope to help.

Case formulations are not new in psychology. They’re really a cornerstone of clinical psychological reasoning – assembling the information gathered during assessment into some sort of explanatory framework that will help the therapist generate possibly hypotheses about predisposing factors, what precipitated the problem, what perpetuates the problem, and any protective factors. Psychologists are no less prone to arguing about whether this approach works than anyone else – except they do some cool studies looking at whether they’re consistent when generating their formulations, and sadly, formulations are not super-consistent with each other (Ridley, Jeffrey & Robertson, 2017).

BUT here’s why I think it might be a useful approach, especially for people with complex problems associated with their pain:

1. Case formulations slow our clinical reasoning down. “Huh?” you say, “Why would that be good?” Well because rapid clinical judgements on the basis of incomplete information tend to lead us towards some important cognitive biases – anchoring on the first possible idea, discounting information that doesn’t fit with that idea, we notice weird stuff more than the commonplace, we fill in information based on stereotypes, generalities and past histories, and we don’t shift from our first conclusion very easily. By taking time to assemble our information, we can delay drawing a conclusion until we have more information.
2. By completing a consistent set of assessments (instead of choosing an ad hoc set based on “the subjective”) we reduce the tendency to look for confirmation of our initial hunch. I know this isn’t usual practice in some professions because that “subjective” history is used to guide assessments which are then used to determine a diagnosis – but the risk is that we’ll look for assessments that confirm our suspicions, meanwhile being blinded to possible alternative explanations (or hypotheses or diagnoses).
3. Working together with the expert on their own situation (ie the person seeking help!) we build collaboration, a shared understanding of the person’s situation, and we can develop an effective working relationship without any hint of “one-up, one-down” that I can see appeals to “experts” who like to point out the “problems” with, for example, posture, gait, motor control and so on – all which may have little to do with the patient’s pain, and a whole lot more to do with creating a “listen to me because I Know Things” situation.
4. Other team members can contribute their assessments, creating a common understanding of the various factors associated with the person’s situation. Common goals can be developed, common language about what might be going on, common treatment aims and enhanced understanding of what each profession contributes can happen when a formulation includes all the wonderful information collected across the team.
5. If one of the treatments doesn’t work (ie the hypothesis doesn’t hold up to testing) there are other options to draw on – we’re not stuck within our own clinical repertoire, we can think across disciplines and across individual clinical models and become far more confident about knowing when to refer on, and how we can support our colleagues.

But, you know, I looked in the pain journals, searched far and wide – and I found few examples of case formulation for persistent pain. The best paper I’ve found so far is from a textbook – so not readily accessible. It’s Linton & Nicholas (2008) “After assessment, then what? Integrating findings for successful case formulation and treatment tailoring”. Where is the rest of the research?!!

Linton, S. J., & Nicholas, M. K. (2008). After assessment, then what? Integrating findings for successful case formulation and treatment tailoring. Clinical Pain Management Second Edition: Practice and Procedures, 4, 1095.

Moore, A., Derry, S., Eccleston, C., & Kalso, E. (2013). Expect analgesic failure; pursue analgesic success. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online), 346.

Ridley, C. R., Jeffrey, C. E. and Roberson, R. B. (2017), Case Mis-Conceptualization in Psychological Treatment: An Enduring Clinical Problem. J. Clin. Psychol., 73: 359–375. doi:10.1002/jclp.22354

Targeting the people who need it most

A couple of things came to mind today as I thought about this post: the first was an article in the local newspaper about a man complaining that the government is “promoting disability” because he couldn’t get surgery for a disc prolapse – and the pain was affecting his ability to work. The second was how to direct the right treatment at the right person at the right time – and how we can be derailed by either wholesale over-servicing “everyone needs treatment X”, or by overburdening people with assessment just to give a fairly basic treatment.

Now with the first man, I don’t know his clinical situation – what I do know is that there are many people every day who must learn to live with their pain because there simply is not an effective treatment of any kind, and that amongst these people are those go on to live wonderful lives despite their pain. I wonder if this man has ever been offered comprehensive self management for while he waits for his surgery. Whether the government could spread some funding away from surgery as the primary option for such pain problems – and instead provide better funding for the wider range of approaches offered through the interdisciplinary pain management centres (approaches which include injection procedures, physiotherapy, psychology, occupational therapy and medications). When there is an effective treatment (and this is arguable in the case of disc prolapse – in fact, it’s difficult to know whether even MRI imaging can give a clear indication of who might respond best to what treatment (Steffens, Hancock, Pereira et al, 2016), we should be able to give it, provided it fits within our country’s health budget. Ahh – that’s the problem, isn’t it… expensive treatments mean fewer people can get basic treatment. And with lumbar disc prolapse, the evidence for surgery is less favourable than many people recognise (Deyo & Mirza, 2016) – they state:

“Patients with severe or progressive neurologic deficits require a referral for surgery. Elective surgery is an option for patients with congruent clinical and MRI findings and a condition that does not improve within 6 weeks. The major benefit of surgery is relief of sciatica that is faster than relief with conservative treatment, but results of early surgical and prolonged conservative treatment tend to be similar at 1 year of follow-up. Patients and physicians should share in decision making.”

So here we have a person with lots of pain, experiencing a great deal of distress, and reducing his work because of pain and disability. My question now (and not for this person in particular) is whether being distressed is equivalent to needing psychological help. How would we know?

There’s been a tendency in pain management to bring in psychologists to help people in this kind of situation. Sometimes people being referred for such help feel aggrieved: “My problem isn’t psychological!” they say, and they’re quite correct. But having a problem that isn’t psychological doesn’t mean some psychological help can’t be useful – unless by doing so, we deny people who have serious psychological health problems from being seen. And in New Zealand there are incredible shortages in mental health service delivery – in Christchurch alone we’ve had an increase in use of mental health services of more than 60% over the past six years since the massive 2010/2011 earthquakes (The Press).

People living with persistent pain often do experience depression, anxiety, poor sleep, challenges to relationships and in general, feeling demoralised and frustrated.  In a recent study of those attending a specialist pain management centre, 60% met criteria for “probable depression” while 33.8% met criteria for “severe depression” (Rayner, Hotopf, Petkova, Matcham, Simpson & McCracken, 2016). BUT that’s 40% who don’t – and it’s my belief that providing psychological services to this group is allocating resources away from people who really need it.

So, what do we do? Well one step forward might be to use effective screening tools to establish who has a serious psychological need and who may respond just as well to reactivation and return to usual activities with the support of the less expensive (but no less skilled) occupational therapy and physiotherapy teams. Vaegter, Handberg, & Kent (in press) have just published a study showing that brief psychological screening measures can be useful for ruling out those with psychological conditions. While we would never use just a questionnaire for diagnosis, when combined with clinical assessment and interview, brief forms of questionnaires can be really helpful for establishing risk and areas for further assessment. This study provides some support for using single item questions to identify those who need more in-depth assessment, and those who don’t need this level of attention. I like that! The idea that we can triage those who probably don’t need the whole toolbox hurled at them is a great idea.

Perhaps the New Zealand politicians, as they begin the downhill towards general elections at the end of the year, could be asked to thoughtfully consider rational distribution of healthcare, and a greater emphasis on targeted use of allied health and expensive surgery.

 

Deyo, R. A., & Mirza, S. K. (2016). Herniated Lumbar Intervertebral Disk. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(18), 1763-1772.

Hahne, A. J., Ford, J. J., & McMeeken, J. M. (2010). Conservative management of lumbar disc herniation with associated radiculopathy: A systematic review. Spine, 35(11), E488-504.

Koffel, E., Kroenke, K., Bair, M. J., Leverty, D., Polusny, M. A., & Krebs, E. E. (2016). The bidirectional relationship between sleep complaints and pain: Analysis of data from a randomized trial. Health Psychology, 35(1), 41-49.

Rayner L, Hotopf M, Petkova H, Matcham F, Simpson A, McCracken LM. Depression in patients with chronic pain attending a specialised pain treatment centre: prevalence and impact on health care costs. Pain. 2016;157(7):1472-1479. doi:10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000542

Steffens, D., Hancock, M.J., Pereira, L.S. et al.(2016) Do MRI findings identify patients with low back pain or sciatica who respond better to particular interventions? A systematic review. European Spine Journal 25: 1170. doi:10.1007/s00586-015-4195-4

Vaegter, H. B. P., Handberg, G. M. D., & Kent, P. P. Brief psychological screening questions can be useful for ruling out psychological conditions in patients with chronic pain. Clinical Journal of Pain.

What do we do with those questionnaires?

Courtesy of many influences in pain management practice, you’d have to have been hiding under a rock or maybe be some sort of dinosaur not to have noticed the increasing emphasis on using questionnaires to measure factors such as pain catastrophising, depression or avoidance. The problem is I’m not sure we’ve all been certain about what to do with the results. It’s not uncommon for me to hear people saying “Oh but once I see psychosocial factors there, I just refer on”, or “they’re useful when the person’s not responding to my treatment, but otherwise…”, “we use them for outcome measures, but they’re not much use for my treatment planning”.

I think many clinicians think psychosocial questionnaires are all very well – but “intuition”  will do “…and what difference would it make to my treatment anyway?”

Today I thought I’d deconstruct the Pain Catastrophising Scale and show what it really means in clinical practice.

The Pain Catastrophising Scale is a well-known and very useful measure of an individual’s tendency to “think the worst” when they’re considering their pain. Catastrophising is defined as “an exaggerated negative mental set brought to bear during actual or anticipated painful experience” (Sullivan et al., 2001). The questionnaire was first developed by Sullivan, Bishop and Pivik in 1995, and the full copy including an extensive manual is available here. Keep returning to that page because updates are made frequently, providing more information about the utility of the measure.

The questionnaire itself is a 13-item measure using a 0 – 4 Likert-type scale from 0 = “not at all” to 4 = “all the time”. Respondents are instructed to “indicate the degree to which you have these thoughts and feelings when you are experiencing pain”.

There are three subscales measuring three major dimensions of catastrophising: rumination “I can’t stop thinking about how much it hurts”; magnification “I worry that something serious may happen”; and helplessness “It’s awful and I feel that it overwhelms me”.

To score the instrument, simply sum all the responses to all 13 items, but to get a better idea of how to help a person, the subscale calculations involve the following:

Rumination: sum items 8,9,10, and 11

Magnification: sum items 6,7, and 13

Helplessness: sum items 1,2,3,4,5, and 12

There’s not a lot of point in having numbers without knowing what they mean, so the manual provides means and standard deviations relating to a population individuals with injury leading to lost time from work in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Clinicians are typically interested in whether the person sitting in front of them is likely to have trouble managing their pain, so the manual also provides “cut off”scores for what could be described as “clinically relevant” levels of catastrophising. A total score of 30 or more is thought to represent the 75th percentile of scores obtained by individuals with chronic pain.

The “so what” question

Cutting to the chase, the question is “so what”? What difference will getting this information from someone make to my clinical reasoning?

Leaving aside the enormous body of literature showing a relationship between high levels of catastrophising and generally poor responses to traditional treatments that address pain alone (including surgery for major joint replacement, recovery from multiple orthopaedic trauma, low back pain, shoulder pain etc), I think it’s helpful to dig down into what the three subscales tell us about the person we’re working with. It’s once we understand these tendencies that we can begin to work out how our approach with someone who has high levels of rumination might differ from what we’ll do when working with someone who has high levels of helplessness.

As an aside and being upfront, I think it’s important to remember that a questionnaire score will only tell you what a person wants you to know. Questionnaires are NOT X-rays of the mind! They’re just convenient ways to ask the same questions more than once, to collect the answers and compare what this person says with the responses from a whole lot of other people, and they allow us to organise information in a way that we might not think to do otherwise.  I also think it’s really important NOT to label a person as “a catastrophiser” as if this is a choice the person has made. People will have all sorts of reasons for tending to think the way they do, and judging someone is unprofessional and unethical.

Rumination

Rumination is that thing we do when a thought just won’t get out of our mind. You know the one – the ear worm, the endless round and round, especially at night, when we can’t get our mind off the things we’re worrying about. If a person has trouble with being able to drag his or her attention away, there are some useful things we can suggest. One theory about rumination is that it’s there as a sort of problem solving strategy, but one that has gone haywire.

Mindfulness can help so that people can notice their thoughts but not get hooked up into them. I like to use this both as a thought strategy, but also as a way of scanning the body and just noticing not only where the pain is experienced, but also where it is not.

“Fifteen minutes of worry” can also help – setting aside one specific time of the day (I like 7.00pm – 7.15pm) where you have to write down everything you’re worried about for a whole fifteen minutes without stopping. By also telling yourself throughout the day “I’m not worrying about this until tonight” and afterwards saying “I’ve already worried about this so I don’t need to right now”, worrying and ruminating can be contained. By being present with the thoughts during that 15 minutes, the threat value of the thought content is also reduced.

Magnification

This is the tendency to think of the worst possible thing rather than the most likely outcome, and it’s common! Magnification can really increase the distress and “freeze” response to a situation. If a person is thinking of all the worst possible outcomes it’s really hard for them to focus on what is actually happening in the here and now. There’s some adaptive features to magnification – if I’ve prepared for the worst, and it doesn’t happen, then I’m in a good situation to go on, but in some people this process becomes so overwhelming that their ability to plan is stopped in its tracks.

Once again, mindfulness can be really useful here, particularly paying attention to what is actually happening in the here and now, rather than what might happen or what has happened. Mindful attention to breathing, body and thoughts can help reduce the “freeze” response, and allow some space for problem solving.

Of course, accurate information presented in nonthreatening terms and in ways the person can process is important to de-threaten the experience of pain. This is at the heart of “explain pain” approaches – and it’s useful. What’s important, however, is to directly address the main concern of the person – and it may not be the pain itself, but the beliefs about what pain will mean in terms of being a good parent, holding down a job, maintaining intimacy, being responsible and reliable. It’s crucial to find out what the person is really concerned about – and then ensure your “reassurance” is really reassuring.

Helplessness

Helplessness is that feeling of “there’s nothing I can do to avoid this awful outcome so I won’t do anything”. It’s a precursor to feelings of depression and certainly part of feeling overwhelmed and out of control.

When a person is feeling helpless it’s important to help them regain a sense of self efficacy, or confidence that they CAN do something to help themselves, to exert some sort of control over their situation. It might be tempting to aim for focusing on pain intensity and helping them gain control over pain intensity, but because it’s often so variable and influenced by numerous factors, it might be more useful to help the person achieve some small goals that are definitely achievable. I often begin with breathing because it’s a foundation for mindfulness, relaxation and has a direct influence over physiological arousal.

You might also begin with some exercise or daily activities that are well within the capabilities of the person you’re seeing. I like walking as a first step (no pun intended) because it doesn’t require any equipment, it’s something we all do, and it can be readily titrated to add difficulty. It’s also something that can be generalised into so many different environments. In a physiotherapy situation I’d like to see PTs consider exercises as their medium for helping a person experience a sense of achievement, of control, rather than a means to an end (ie to “fix” some sort of deficit).

To conclude
Questionnaires don’t add value until they’re USED. I think it’s unethical to administer a questionnaire without knowing what it means, without using the results, and without integrating the results into clinical reasoning. The problem is that so many questionnaires are based on psychological models and these haven’t been integrated into physiotherapy or occupational therapy clinical reasoning models. Maybe it’s time to work out how do this?

Sullivan M J L, Bishop S, Pivik J. The Pain Catastrophizing Scale: Development and validation. Psychol Assess 1995, 7: 524-532.

Main, C. J., Foster, N., & Buchbinder, R. (2010). How important are back pain beliefs and expectations for satisfactory recovery from back pain? Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology, 24(2), 205-217. doi:doi:10.1016/j.berh.2009.12.012

Sturgeon, J. A., Zautra, A. J., & Arewasikporn, A. (2014). A multilevel structural equation modeling analysis of vulnerabilities and resilience resources influencing affective adaptation to chronic pain. PAIN®, 155(2), 292-298. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2013.10.007

Ambiguity and uncertainty

Humans vary in how comfortable we are with uncertainty or ambiguity: Tolerance of ambiguity is a construct discussed in cognitive and experimental research literature, and refers to the willingness to prefer black and white situations, where “there is an aversive reaction to ambiguous situations because the lack of information makes it difficult to assess risk and correctly make a decision. These situations are perceived as a threat and source of discomfort. Reactions to the perceived threat are stress, avoidance, delay, suppression, or denial” (Furnham & Marks, 2013, p. 718).  Tolerance to uncertainty is often discussed in relation to response to stress and emotions associated with being in an ambiguous situation, or it may refer to a future-oriented trait where an individual is responding to an ambiguous situation in the present. Suffice to say, for some individuals the need to be certain and clear means they find it very difficult to be in situations where multiple outcomes are possible and where information is messy. As a result, they find ways to counter the unease, ranging from avoiding making a decision to authoritatively dictating what “should” be done (or not done).

How does this affect us in a clinical setting? Well, both parties in this setting can have varying degrees of comfort with ambiguity.

Our clients may find it difficult to deal with not knowing their diagnosis, the cause of their painful experience, the time-frame of its resolution, and managing the myriad uncertainties that occur when routines are disrupted by the unexpected. For example, workers from the UK were interviewed about their unemployment as a result of low back pain. Uncertainty (both physical and financial) was given as one of the major themes from interviews of their experience of unemployment (Patel, Greasley, Watson, 2007).  Annika Lillrank, in a study from 2003, found that resolving diagnostic uncertainty was a critical point in the trajectory of those living with low back pain (Lillrank, 2003).

But it’s not just clients who find it hard to deal with uncertainty – clinicians do too. Slade, Molloy and Keating (2011) found that physiotherapists believe patients want a clear diagnosis but feel challenged when they’re faced with diagnostic uncertainty. What then happens is a temptation to be critical of the patients if they fail to improve, to seek support from other more senior colleagues, and end up feeling unprepared by their training to deal with this common situation. The response to uncertainty, at least in this study, was for clinicians to “educate” care-seekers about their injury/diagnosis despite diagnostic uncertainty (my italics), and a strong desire to see rapid improvements, and tend to attribute lack of progress to the client when either the client doesn’t want “education” or fails to improve (Slade, Molloy & Keating, 2003).

Physiotherapists are not alone in this tendency: There is a large body of literature discussing so-called “medically unexplained diseases” which, naturally, include chronic pain disorders. For example Bekkelund and Salvesen (2006) found that more referrals were made to neurologists when the clinician felt uncertain about a diagnosis of migraine. GP’s, in a study by Rosser (1996) were more likely to refer to specialists in part because they were uncertain – while specialists, dealing as they do with a narrower range of symptoms and body systems, deal with less diagnostic uncertainty. Surprisingly, despite the difference in degree of uncertainty, GP’s order fewer tests and procedures yet often produce identical outcomes!

How do we manage uncertainty and ambiguity?

Some of us will want to apply subtypes, groupings, algorithms – means of controlling the degree of uncertainty and ambiguity in our clinical practice. Some of the findings from various tests (eg palpation or tender point examination) are used as reasons for following a certain clinical rule of thumb. In physiotherapy, medicine and to a certain extent my own field of occupational therapy, there is a tendency to “see nails because all I have is a hammer” in an attempt to fit a client into a certain clinical rule or process. We see endless publications identifying “subtypes” and various ways to cut down the uncertainty within our field, particularly with respect to low back pain where we really are dealing with uncertainty.

Some of these subgroupings may appear effective – I remember the enthusiasm for leg length discrepancies, muscle “imbalance”, and more recently neutral spine and core stability – because for some people these approaches were helpful! Over time, the enthusiasm has waned.

Others of us apply what we could call an eclectic approach – a bit of this, a bit of that, something I like to do, something that I just learned – and yes, even some of these approaches seem to work.

My concern is twofold. (1) What is the clinical reasoning behind adopting either a rule-governed algorithm or subtyping approach or an eclectic approach? Why use X instead of Y? And are we reasoning after the fact to justify our approach? (2) What do we do if it doesn’t work? Where does that leave us? As Slade, Molloy & Keating (2003), do we begin blaming the patient when our hammer fails to find a nail?

I’ve long advocated working to generate multiple hypotheses to explain how and why a person is presenting in this way at this time. It’s a case formulation approach where, collaborating with the person and informed by broad assessment across multiple domains that are known to be associated with pain, a set of possible explanations (hypotheses) are generated. Then we systematically test these either through further clinical assessment, or by virtue of providing an intervention and carefully monitoring the outcome. This approach doesn’t resolve uncertainty – but it does allow for some time to de-bias our clinical reasoning, it involves the client in sorting out what might be going on, it means we have more than one way to approach the problem (the one the client identifies, not just our own!), and it means we have some way of holding all this ambiguous and uncertain information in place so we can see what’s going on. I know case formulations are imperfect, and they don’t solve anything in themselves (see Delle-Vergini & Day (2016) for a recent review of case formulation in forensic practice – not too different from ordinary clinical practice in musculoskeletal management IMHO) . What they do is provide a systematic process to follow that can incorporate uncertainty without needing a clinician to jump to conclusions.

I’d love your thoughts on managing uncertainty as a clinician in your daily practice. How do you deal with it? Is there room for uncertainty and ambiguity? What would happen if we could sit with this uncertainty without jumping in to treat for just a little longer? Could mindfulness be useful? What if you’re someone who experiences a great deal of empathy for people who distressed – can you sit with not knowing while in the presence of someone who is hurting?

 

Bekkelund, S., & Salvesen, R. (2006). Is uncertain diagnosis a more frequent reason for referring migraine patients to neurologist than other headache syndromes? European Journal of Neurology, 13(12), 1370-1373. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-1331.2006.01523.x

Delle-Vergini, V., & Day, A. (2016). Case formulation in forensic practice: Challenges and opportunities. The Journal of Forensic Practice, 18(3), null. doi:doi:10.1108/JFP-01-2016-0005

Furnham, A., & Marks, J. (2013). Tolerance of ambiguity: A review of the recent literature. Psychology, Vol.04No.09, 12. doi:10.4236/psych.2013.49102

Lillrank, A. (2003). Back pain and the resolution of diagnostic uncertainty in illness narratives. Social Science & Medicine, 57(6), 1045-1054. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536%2802%2900479-3

Patel, S., Greasley, K., Watson, P. J. (2007). Barriers to rehabilitation and return to work for unemployed chronic pain patients: A qualitative study. European Journal of Pain: Ejp, 11(8), 831-840.

Rosser, W. W. (1996). Approach to diagnosis by primary care clinicians and specialists: Is there a difference? Journal of Family Practice, 42(2), 139-144.

Slade, S. C., Molloy, E., & Keating, J. L. (2012). The dilemma of diagnostic uncertainty when treating people with chronic low back pain: A qualitative study. Clinical Rehabilitation, 26(6), 558-569. doi:10.1177/0269215511420179