Patient Satisfaction With Chronic Pain Management: Patient Perspectives of Improvement

Integrating satisfaction measures with pain-related variables can highlight global change and improvement from the patients' perspective. This study examined patient satisfaction in an interdisciplinary chronic pain management program. Nine hundred and twenty-seven (n = 927) participants completed pre- and post-treatment measures of pain, depression, catastrophizing, anxiety, stages of change, and pain acceptance. Multiple regression was used to examine these variables at admission and discharge as predictors of patient satisfaction. Pain-related variables explained 50.6% of the variance (R² = .506, F _22,639 = 29.79, P < .001) for general satisfaction, and 38.9% of the variance (R² = 0.389, F _22,639 = 18.49, P < .001) for goal accomplishment. Significant predictors of general satisfaction included depression (β = -0.188, P < .001) and the maintenance stage of change (β = 0.272, P < .001). The latter was also a significant predictor of goal accomplishment (β = 0.300, P < .001). Discharge pain-related measures are more influential than admission measures for predicting patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction is significantly related to establishing a self-management approach to pain.