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24th Annual Meeting February 13-16, 2008 Orlando, FL |
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© 2006 American Academy of Pain Medicine |
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Thursday, February 14, 2008
102
What are the Variables that are Associated with the Patient's Wish to Sue His Physician in Patients with Acute and Chronic Pain?
Although there is limited research on patient attributes that may be related to reasons for launching a malpractice suit, no such research has been performed in patients with acute (APPS) or chronic (CPPS) pain. The objective of this study was then to develop some statistical models that would describe such patients' attributes.
Methods:
The question, “I am thinking about suing one of my doctors” (Sue-MD) is the focus of this study and was contained within the Battery for Health Improvement (BHI) research version (BHI-R). The BHI-R was administered to 1487 community subjects (1329 healthy and 158 non-healthy) and 777 patients in rehabilitation of whom 326 were APPS, 341 were CPPS and 110 had no pain. In addition, descriptive data such as whether the patient had an attorney for a Worker's Compensation claim was also collected.
If a BHI 2 Scale was statistically significant at p<0.001 then all the questions from that scale were analyzed for significance by chi-square. Significant categorical variables (p<0.001) and significant BHI 2 questions were then utilized as independent variables in a logistic regression model to assess the predictability of the independent variables for sue-MD.
Setting:
Variety of settings.
Results:
Relative risks for the symmetric sue-MD relative to the healthy community were in order of ascending risk as follows: Healthy community; rehabilitation APPS; non-healthy community; rehabilitation patients; rehabilitation patients without pain; rehabilitation CPPS; rehabilitation patients with Worker's Compensation litigation. For APPS the logistic regression model classified 96% of the patients correctly. For CPPS the logistic regression model classified 93% of the patients correctly.
Conclusions:
CPPS are at greater risk than patients without pain and APPS for harboring the Sue-MD wish. Some patient attributes and the referral/treatment situation appear to be important predictors for harboring this issue but differ between APPS and CPPS.
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Funding: Pearson Assessments helped with production of the poster.
Nothing to disclose.
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