Follow-up appointments could be arranged for a number of reasons. Appointments are anticipated to be shorter in duration than the first PROMPPT assessment (no longer than 15 minutes).
We think the most likely reasons to see a patient again will be to:
- Review readiness to make changes to pain medicines +/- self-care
- Review an agreed plan to reduce opioids
- Review an agreed plan to reduce/change non-opioid medicines
- Review to give support regards agreed self-care goals and action plan
There may be other reasons and this will be important for the research team to find out.
Not all patients you will follow-up will have an existing plan to reduce or make changes to the medicines they regularly take for pain. For those patients, a follow-up appointment is an opportunity to review the following:
- Any overall change in pain (remembering that pain does tend to come and go over time)
- Any overall change in the level of engagement in day to day activities and the things that are important to the individual patient
- Any change in the adverse effects of the opioids and/or non-opioid pain medicines
- Whether the patient experienced any withdrawal symptoms and to what extent and duration any symptoms interfered with their day-to-day living
Further follow-up appointments can then be arranged as you and the patient feel necessary and appropriate.
