Development of an interdisciplinary training program about chronic pain management for healthcare professionals: part of an effectiveness-implementation study

Background: Many applied postgraduate pain training programs are monodisciplinary, while interdisciplinary training programs potentially improve interdisciplinary collaboration, which is favorable within the management of patients with chronic pain. However, there is limited research on the development and effectiveness of interdisciplinary training programs, especially in the context of chronic pain. Methods This study aimed to describe the development and implementation of an interdisciplinary training program regarding the management of patients with chronic pain, which is part of an implementation project. The training program contained two workshops of seven hours each and two e-learning modules and was targeted at general practitioners, (home)nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dentists and pharmacists. An interdisciplinary expert panel was organised to prioritise learning objectives, rate healthcare professionals' current compliance with the learning objectives and formulate the barriers and needs relating to training content and the implementation of chronic pain management in clinical practice. Results The interdisciplinary expert panel considered the learning objectives as very important and current compliance was rated as relatively low. A wide variety of barriers and needs for Belgian healthcare professionals were formulated within the COM-B domains; capability, opportunity, motivation and behaviour. The interdisciplinary program about the management of patients with chronic pain aimed to promote and facilitate the implementation of the biopsychosocial model and pain science education into clinical practice. Conclusion We designed an interdisciplinary training program regarding the management of patients with chronic pain that can be used as a foundation for developing future training programs to enhance the quality of future training programs.