The Association Between Analgesic Treatment Beliefs and Electronically Monitored Adherence for Cancer Pain

To determine whether clusters based on analgesic treatment beliefs among patients with cancer predict objective analgesic adherence.

207 patients with cancer in the outpatient setting who were aged 18 years or older, self-identified as White or African American, were diagnosed with solid tumor or multiple myeloma, and were prescribed at least one around-the-clock analgesic prescription for reported cancer pain.

This study is a secondary analysis of an existing dataset. General linear modeling with a backward elimination approach was applied to determine whether previously identified analgesic treatment belief clusters, as well as sociodemographic, clinical, and pain variables, were associated with adherence behaviors.

Significant explanatory factors were experiential in nature and included sociodemographic, clinical, and pain-related variables, explaining 21% of the variance in analgesic adherence. Analgesic belief clusters were not predictive of adherence.

Future research should examine sociodemographic and other clinical factors, as well as the influence of analgesic treatment beliefs, to better understand adherence behaviors among patients with cancer.