In people with nociplastic dominant chronic pain is multi-disciplinary pain management plus motivational interviewing more effective than multi-disciplinary pain management alone for improving pain self-efficacy and pain interference: A randomised controlled trial protocol

ABSTRACT Background Chronic pain is the leading cause of disability and disease burden globally. Emerging evidence suggests that people with nociplastic dominant chronic pain commonly have heightened pain sensitivity, high levels of pain interference and low self-efficacy. There is low certainty evidence supporting the effectiveness of motivational interviewing in a range of health conditions including chronic pain. However, the impact of motivational interviewing as an adjunct to evidence-based multi-disciplinary pain management has not been adequately evaluated. The aim of this paper is to describe the protocol for a randomised controlled trial comparing multi-disciplinary pain management plus motivational interviewing to multi-disciplinary pain management alone for improving pain self-efficacy and pain interference in people with nociplastic dominant chronic pain. Methods A multi-centre parallel group randomised controlled trial is proposed. 184 participants with nociplastic dominant chronic musculoskeletal pain referred for multi-disciplinary pain management will be recruited. All participants will receive multi-disciplinary pain management over 12 weeks with one group having adjunctive motivational interviewing. Outcomes will be assessed at 12, 26 and 52 weeks following randomisation. The co-primary outcomes will be the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire and Brief Pain Inventory pain interference scores at 52 weeks. Data will be analysed according to intention-to-treat principles and estimate between-group effects using linear mixed models. Conclusion This trial will determine the difference in outcomes between multi-disciplinary pain management plus motivational interviewing and multi-disciplinary pain management alone for chronic nociplastic dominant pain.