Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 28, 2025
Author Spotlight: Methodologies and Advancements of Chronic Pain Management Research
Published on: January 5, 2024
A web-based therapeutic patient education intervention for pain and sleep for women with fibromyalgia: A sequential
Carolina Climent-Sanz1,2,3, Montserrat Gea-Sánchez1,2,3, María T Moreno-Casbas4,5
1Faculty of Nursing and Physiotherapy, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain.
Aims:
To evaluate cognitive and behavioural factors related to pain and poor sleep quality in women diagnosed with fibromyalgia and to develop and test the effects of a web-based therapeutic education intervention on pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, chronic pain self-efficacy, sleep quality, dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep and quality of life and health status related to fibromyalgia.
Design:
The project will employ a sequential exploratory mixed methods research design.
Methods:
For the qualitative phase, a theoretical sample living in the community will be recruited to participate in personal, semi-structured interviews. For the quantitative phase, a sample of adult women with fibromyalgia will be recruited from secondary care centres and randomly allocated an intervention or a control group. The study protocol was approved in 2019.
Discussion:
Fibromyalgia is the most common central sensitivity syndrome and one of the principal worldwide causes of chronic widespread pain among the adult population. Poor sleep quality is a highly prevalent and troublesome symptom for people with fibromyalgia. Psychosocial and behavioural factors have been shown to relate intimately with the symptom experiences of people with fibromyalgia; pain catastrophizing and dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep can perpetuate those and other fibromyalgia symptoms.
Conclusion:
It is imperative to reflect people's actual symptom experiences to develop effective symptom management strategies. In the Internet era, this project's proposed web-based therapeutic education intervention could offer women with fibromyalgia a new avenue for treatment as part of standard fibromyalgia management programs in primary and secondary healthcare services.
Impact:
Pain and poor sleep quality are highly prevalent and troublesome symptoms for people with fibromyalgia. The web-based therapeutic education intervention proposed in this project could provide women with fibromyalgia a new avenue for treatment in primary and secondary healthcare services. Protocol registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03686410.
