Educational needs and preferences of adult patients with acute or chronic pain: a mixed methods systematic review protocol.

OBJECTIVES: This review will aim to synthesize the available quantitative and qualitative evidence on the educational needs and preferences of adult patients with acute or chronic pain. INTRODUCTION: Acute and chronic pain are prevalent problems and are associated with significant individual and societal consequences. Education is a critical component of pain management. However, the impact of educational interventions on pain outcomes remains limited. The lack of patient input--what patients want to know and how they want to be informed--is one of the main issues underlying intervention design. INCLUSION CRITERIA: We will include qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies describing the educational needs and preferences of adult patients with acute or chronic pain. METHODS: This review will follow the JBI guidelines for mixed methods systematic reviews. We will search MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase (Ovid), PsycINFO (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. The search strategy will commence from the year 1990 onward and there will be no language restrictions. The retrieved titles, abstracts, and full-text reports will be screened by pairs of independent reviewers. These pairs of reviewers will also independently extract data using the JBI tools for mixed methods systematic reviews. Methodological quality will be assessed using the mixed methods appraisal tool. A convergent integrated approach to synthesis and integration of the quantitative and qualitative data will be used. REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42022303834.