Which pain inventory form do you use in practice?

[Ligament]

I'm looking for a solid multidimensional pain assessment and outcomes questionnaire to use in the clinic. I'm considering using the Pain Outcomes Questionnaire developed by the VA. Would anybody care to recommend a better one?

Pain Outcomes Questionnaire- VA (POQ-VA). The POQ-VA is an outcomes package developed for use with veterans and consisting of intake (45 items), post-treatment (28 items), and follow-up (36 items) questionnaires. The POQ-VA represents the culmination of a five-year cooperative effort with the American Academy of Pain Management to revise, improve, and adapt a preexisting pain outcomes instrument (the National Pain Data Bank) for use with VA patients experiencing pain. The POQ-VA is the only pain instrument developed specifically to assess treatment outcomes across all of the pain-related domains of functioning identified by the Rehabilitation Accreditation Commission (2002) as essential for comprehensive outcomes measurement. Outcomes domains include pain intensity, pain interference (ADLs, Mobility), Negative Affect, Vitality (activity level), pain-related fear (Fear), vocational functioning, patient satisfaction, and medical resource utilization from intake through follow-up. Core POQ-VA (formerly known as the National Pain Data Bank VA-Version 2.0) scales have been found to have adequate to high internal reliability and good stability (Gironda, Azzarello, & Clark, 2002), and generalizability coefficients, which are indices of the fidelity of true score measurement (Heaton, Chelune, Talley, Kay, & Curtiss, 1993), indicated excellent scale reliability. Validation studies using veterans treated in outpatient and inpatient pain treatment settings revealed that the POQ-VA demonstrated good concurrent validity in relation to a number of widely accepted "gold standard" measures of pain-related impairment (Clark & Gironda, 2000; Clark, Gironda, & Young, 2003), as well as good sensitivity to treatment-related change (Clark et al., 2003). Confirmatory factor analysis has revealed that the POQ-VA scales reflect a stable latent factor structure representing two higher-order factors (emotional distress and pain interference; Young, Clark, & Gironda, 2003). The POQ-VA is available for downloading from the www.vachronicpain.org website, and also is available in a short form version (POQ-SF).

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[Aether2000]

I have concerns with anything developed by organizations that teach whacko stuff. One issue of their journal discusses the joys of how naturopathic doctors use ground up plants and inject them IV into people as treatments. They are heavy into energy field medicine and a host of other bizarre treatments...check out their annual meeting courses. Also, this organization is being used by CRNAs as their certification (a 2 hour exam I finished in less than an hour) to prove they are every bit as good as you are in pain medicine and are taking this "certification" they call AAPM certification to hospitals and ASCs to gain clinical privileges.
Because of these issues and others, it is unclear to me how organized medicine can trust the construct of any outcome measure given their penchant for the bizarre. The tool may be quite valid but given their ethics regarding certifying unqualified untrained uneducated CRNAs and the voodoo they teach, neither the quality of such a tool nor the intent can be assured.
Perhaps there are other tools that have been developed by other organizations???

 

[lobelsteve]

I have concerns with anything developed by organizations that teach whacko stuff. One issue of their journal discusses the joys of how naturopathic doctors use ground up plants and inject them IV into people as treatments. They are heavy into energy field medicine and a host of other bizarre treatments...check out their annual meeting courses. Also, this organization is being used by CRNAs as their certification (a 2 hour exam I finished in less than an hour) to prove they are every bit as good as you are in pain medicine and are taking this "certification" they call AAPM certification to hospitals and ASCs to gain clinical privileges.
Because of these issues and others, it is unclear to me how organized medicine can trust the construct of any outcome measure given their penchant for the bizarre. The tool may be quite valid but given their ethics regarding certifying unqualified untrained uneducated CRNAs and the voodoo they teach, neither the quality of such a tool nor the intent can be assured.
Perhaps there are other tools that have been developed by other organizations???

Newsweek has done us all a favor and published this yesterday:

It is a story on BS medical publishing.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/73283

 

[Ligament]

I have concerns with anything developed by organizations that teach whacko stuff. One issue of their journal discusses the joys of how naturopathic doctors use ground up plants and inject them IV into people as treatments. They are heavy into energy field medicine and a host of other bizarre treatments...check out their annual meeting courses. Also, this organization is being used by CRNAs as their certification (a 2 hour exam I finished in less than an hour) to prove they are every bit as good as you are in pain medicine and are taking this "certification" they call AAPM certification to hospitals and ASCs to gain clinical privileges.
Because of these issues and others, it is unclear to me how organized medicine can trust the construct of any outcome measure given their penchant for the bizarre. The tool may be quite valid but given their ethics regarding certifying unqualified untrained uneducated CRNAs and the voodoo they teach, neither the quality of such a tool nor the intent can be assured.
Perhaps there are other tools that have been developed by other organizations???

Algos, I did not catch that the POQ was developed by AAPM. I am however still open to suggestions for other forms to use for the practice. Very open to suggestions!

 

[Aether2000]

I didn't catch it either when this was first released.
I am converting to a new EMR (finally) in Jan and will be able to have patients do whatever outcome assessment in the lobby prior to seeing me for a clinic visit, and this info is embedded directly into the chart. I will believe it when I see it...lol. But I am also looking for some reasonable outcome studies that are rapid and easy to complete. We developed a quick form in my practice but it has not been validated, so I seek other assessment forms...

 

[Ligament]

I didn't catch it either when this was first released.
I am converting to a new EMR (finally) in Jan and will be able to have patients do whatever outcome assessment in the lobby prior to seeing me for a clinic visit, and this info is embedded directly into the chart. I will believe it when I see it...lol. But I am also looking for some reasonable outcome studies that are rapid and easy to complete. We developed a quick form in my practice but it has not been validated, so I seek other assessment forms...

Anybody?

 

[ampaphb]

I didn't catch it either when this was first released.
I am converting to a new EMR (finally) in Jan and will be able to have patients do whatever outcome assessment in the lobby prior to seeing me for a clinic visit, and this info is embedded directly into the chart. I will believe it when I see it...lol. But I am also looking for some reasonable outcome studies that are rapid and easy to complete. We developed a quick form in my practice but it has not been validated, so I seek other assessment forms...

What EMR did you chose?

 

[Aether2000]

Meditab. The EMR is an integrated billing, EHR, auto dialer telephone reminder, integrated fax server, prescription fax/printing, and integrated forms and questionnaires for patients in which they input data on a computer screen. It also has a portal but I am very wary of that feature and do not plan to use it. The company has 188 employees, has been around since 1998, and mainly is for larger systems. Our cost including data transfer from our current EMR: 17,000 plus $3-4K a year for a physician and NP and unlimited users.