For persistent pain conditions, education is a recommended first-line intervention that can help address any misconceptions patients may have regarding their pain. It is important to appropriately address these misconceptions early on, as they can result in poor outcomes and impact patient recovery.

 

Pain science education (PSE) can be used to challenge pre-existing beliefs surrounding pain that patients may have. PSE assumes: 1) learners hold beliefs that are harmful, or in conflict with ‘to-be-learned’; and 2) education doesn’t just add new knowledge but modifies prior knowledge. Despite PSE having clinical benefit, patient and clinician feedback suggests that it could be more concise and that information delivered in a group setting can lack personal relevance to an individual patient.

 

Pain education consists of target concepts that have been formulated by clinicians and researchers. Currently, it is not known which of these target concepts are the most important to those who live with persistent pain. The overall aim of this study is to use a convergent mixed method approach to investigate which target concepts are important to people that self-identify as improved following a pain science education intervention for persistent pain.