Developing recommendations for digital collaboration meetings across healthcare levels and services for patients with chronic pain- a qualitative study

TL;DR

This study develops recommendations for using digital meetings to improve collaboration among healthcare services for chronic pain patients.

Contribution

The paper introduces flexible, patient-centered recommendations for digital collaboration meetings across healthcare levels for chronic pain care.

Findings

Recommendations were grouped into three themes: patient-centeredness, common action plans, and good meeting climate.

Flexible approaches were proposed to accommodate varying levels of preparedness among participants.

The recommendations are ready for further testing as digital collaboration becomes more widespread.

Abstract

Collaboration between healthcare services is essential for the quality and continuity of care for persons with chronic pain. Collaboration meetings using digital solutions can be useful in overcoming collaboration challenges. However, there is a scarcity of studies on conducting digital collaboration meetings across services, particularly across healthcare levels for patients with chronic pain. Therefore, the aim of the study was to develop recommendations for how to plan and conduct digital collaboration meetings across care levels and services for patients with chronic pain.

A qualitative study collecting data from a development process for digital collaboration meeting recommendations was conducted between October 2022 and June 2023. Data were collected at workshops, discussions in the clinic and research group meetings. The analysis focused on topics that generated the most discussions during the development process.

The discussions leading to the recommendations were categorised into three themes: ‘Patient-centeredness in the digital collaboration meeting’, ‘A common action plan’ and ‘Good meeting climate’. The main discussions included what it meant to place the patient at the centre of the activities, whether the patient should be present when professionals discussed the interprofessional assessments, whether clinical notes and suggestions for action should be distributed before the digital collaboration meeting, and how to ensure well-led meetings with clear agendas.

A set of recommendations for how to plan and conduct digital collaboration meetings across care levels and services for patients with chronic pain was developed. Due to practical issues and differing opinions, the final recommendations offer flexible approaches to meet different levels of preparedness before the meeting. The recommendations are ready to be further tested as collaboration meetings are implemented more widely.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-026-14345-0.