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The effect of a pain educational video intervention upon child pain‐related outcomes: A randomized controlled study
Author(s) -
Rheel Emma,
Ickmans Kelly,
Wauters Aline,
Van Ryckeghem Dimitri M. L.,
Malfliet Anneleen,
Vervoort Tine
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of pain
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.305
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1532-2149
pISSN - 1090-3801
DOI - 10.1002/ejp.1822
Subject(s) - worry , pain catastrophizing , intervention (counseling) , moderation , psychological intervention , physical therapy , randomized controlled trial , medicine , psychology , chronic pain , psychiatry , anxiety , social psychology
Background Pain neuroscience education (PNE) has received increasing research attention demonstrating beneficial effects on pain‐related outcomes in adults. Conversely, studies on the effectiveness of PNE in children are scarce. Methods This study investigated the effect of a pain educational video intervention on child pain‐related outcomes (i.e. experienced pain intensity, pain‐related fear and catastrophic worry about pain, pain threshold and pain knowledge) in healthy children undergoing an experimental pain task. Furthermore, the moderating role of children's demographic (i.e. sex and age) and psychological (i.e. baseline pain knowledge and anticipated pain intensity, pain‐related fear and catastrophic worry) characteristics was examined. Participants were 89 children ( M age = 11.85, SD = 1.78), randomly assigned to either a condition whereby they were instructed to watch a brief pain educational video (i.e. experimental group) or to a control condition whereby they did not watch any video. Results Study findings revealed that accurate pain knowledge and pain threshold were higher amongst children in the experimental group compared to the control group. In contrast with expectations, no main effects of the video intervention were observed for experienced pain intensity, pain‐related fear and catastrophic worry. Moderation analyses indicated that the video intervention contributed, in comparison with the control condition, to higher levels of pain knowledge amongst younger children only and to higher pain thresholds amongst boys only. Conclusions Further investigation is needed to optimize pain educational video interventions and to determine whether more beneficial outcomes can be found in clinical (i.e. non‐experimental) situations and in children with persistent or recurring pain problems. Significance Examining the impact of pain educational interventions within a non‐clinical setting is deemed particularly important given that adaptive pain coping strategies likely play an important role in preventing the development and maintenance of future maladaptive pain‐related behaviour. Further, study findings provide preliminary evidence of baseline and demographic (i.e. age and sex) characteristics explaining differences in the effect of a pain educational video intervention in pain knowledge and pain‐related experiences during experimental pain.