Visualizations to Improve Pain Communication Between Patients, Interpreters, and Providers

Pain Clinical Trial

Official title: Information Visualization to Improve Pain Communication Between Providers, Interpreters, and Patients With Limited English Proficiency

Status Completed

Clinical Trial Summary

The purpose of this study is to pilot test a pain assessment information visualization (InfoViz) tool to facilitate communication about pain severity, location, and quality to increase mutual understanding between patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), interpreters, and providers during pain assessment. 40 participants will be enrolled and can expect to be on study for up to 4 weeks.

Clinical Trial Description

The purpose of this study is to pilot test a pain assessment information visualization (InfoViz) tool to facilitate communication about pain severity, location, and quality to increase mutual understanding between patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), interpreters, and providers during pain assessment.

The investigators focus on the LEP Hmong because pain is particularly problematic for this group. The Hmong describe pain using visual metaphors that are inconsistent with providers' knowledge and interpreters struggle to translate metaphors accurately between patients and providers. The goals of the study are (1) to examine the feasibility of implementing the pain InfoViz tool, (2) to explore congruency of patient-interpreter-provider triads' mutual understanding (MU) of pain severity, location, and quality, and (3) to evaluate outcome measures selected to capture satisfaction with communication, pain relief, and pain interference with life and explore variables identified in the InfoViz tool conceptual framework (MU of pain assessment information, satisfaction with communication, pain diagnosis and treatment).

The investigators will first collect data from 20 participants under the usual care control condition (i.e., interpreters verbally interpreting and communicating pain descriptions), followed by data collection from another 20 participants under the intervention condition (i.e., interpreters using verbal descriptions and the InfoViz tool).

The investigators believe that the pain assessment InfoViz tool will increase mutual understanding of pain severity, location, and quality between patients, interpreters, and providers, and consequently lead to increased satisfaction with communication, greater pain relief and reduced pain interference with daily life through better-informed diagnosis and treatment. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Communication
• Pain

• NCT number: NCT04975789
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: October 7, 2021
• Completion date: February 23, 2023