Brief Educational Video plus Telecare to Enhance Recovery for Older Emergency Department Patients with Acute Musculoskeletal Pain: an update to the study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Karen Hurka-Richardson; Timothy F Platts-Mills; Samuel A McLean; Morris Weinberger; Sally C Stearns; Montika Bush; Eugenia Quackenbush; Srihari Chari; Aileen Aylward; Kurt Kroenke; Robert D Kerns; Mark A Weaver; Francis J Keefe; David Berkoff; Michelle L Meyer

doi:10.1186/s13063-022-06310-z

Brief Educational Video plus Telecare to Enhance Recovery for Older Emergency Department Patients with Acute Musculoskeletal Pain: an update to the study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Trials. 2022 May 12;23(1):400. doi: 10.1186/s13063-022-06310-z.

Authors

Karen Hurka-Richardson¹, Timothy F Platts-Mills², Samuel A McLean^{1

3}, Morris Weinberger⁴, Sally C Stearns⁴, Montika Bush¹, Eugenia Quackenbush¹, Srihari Chari¹, Aileen Aylward¹, Kurt Kroenke⁵, Robert D Kerns⁶, Mark A Weaver⁷, Francis J Keefe⁸, David Berkoff⁹, Michelle L Meyer¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Department of Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Houpt Bldg, 170 Manning Dr, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
² Ophirex, Inc., Corte Madera, CA, USA.
³ Department of Anesthesiology, University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
⁴ Department of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
⁵ Regenstrief Institute and Department of Medicine, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA.
⁶ Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology and Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁷ Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Elon University, Elon, NC, USA.
⁸ Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
⁹ Department of Orthopedics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Houpt Bldg, 170 Manning Dr, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. michelle_meyer@med.unc.edu.

Abstract

Background: This update describes changes to the Brief Educational Tool to Enhance Recovery (BETTER) trial in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods/design: The original protocol was published in Trials. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BETTER trial converted to remote recruitment in April 2020. All recruitment, consent, enrollment, and randomization now occur by phone within 24 h of the acute care visit. Other changes to the original protocol include an expansion of inclusion criteria and addition of new recruitment sites. To increase recruitment numbers, eligibility criteria were expanded to include individuals with chronic pain, non-daily opioid use within 2 weeks of enrollment, presenting musculoskeletal pain (MSP) symptoms for more than 1 week, hospitalization in past 30 days, and not the first time seeking medical treatment for presenting MSP pain. In addition, recruitment sites were expanded to other emergency departments and an orthopedic urgent care clinic.

Conclusions: Recruiting from an orthopedic urgent care clinic and transitioning to remote operations not only allowed for continued participant enrollment during the pandemic but also resulted in some favorable outcomes, including operational efficiencies, increased enrollment, and broader generalizability.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04118595 . Registered on October 8, 2019.

Keywords: Emergency medicine; Geriatrics; Musculoskeletal pain; Shared decision-making.

Publication types

Clinical Trial Protocol
Letter

MeSH terms

Acute Pain* / diagnosis
Acute Pain* / therapy
COVID-19*
Emergency Service, Hospital
Humans
Musculoskeletal Pain* / diagnosis
Musculoskeletal Pain* / therapy
Pandemics
Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
SARS-CoV-2
Treatment Outcome

Associated data

ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT04118595

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Associated data

Grants and funding