Virtual and in-person chronic pain management outcomes: A retrospective observational study

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated alternate modes of delivery of chronic pain management programs. The aim of this retrospective observational study was to examine the outcomes of virtual and in-person programs during the pandemic.

Data were collected from the five-week intensive interdisciplinary pain management program (adapted for the pandemic) at the Michael G. DeGroote Pain Clinic, Hamilton, Ontario (N = 99; 66% virtual). Participants completed psychometric measures of pain intensity, pain disability, kinesiophobia, anxiety, depression, catastrophizing, sensitivity to pain traumatization, pain stages of change, pain acceptance, likelihood estimates of return to work and subjective happiness scales at admission and discharge, and self-evaluations of program benefit and satisfaction at discharge. A 2 × 2 mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) on outcomes and between-groups ANOVAs on satisfaction measures were conducted.

Both programs produced highly significant outcomes with medium to large effect sizes for all measures (except the contemplation stage of change; p < 0.001, η_p2 = 0.09-0.580) at discharge with no differences between them. No differences between program delivery modes were obtained with regard to the satisfaction measures (p > 0.05) either. Bonferroni correction was applied to the analysis.

Results show that virtual delivery of chronic pain management is just as effective as in-person delivery. Previous findings on the benefits of interdisciplinary chronic pain management are replicated. Results point to the need to have both programs available for patients to promote benefit for all patients.