The Hamilton Inventory for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: a cognitive debriefing study of the clinician-based component

Abstract

Study design: Descriptive.

Introduction: The Hamilton Inventory for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (HI-CRPS) is a multidisciplinary assessment tool under development.

Purpose of the study: This study examined the assessment practices, beliefs and preferences of health care professionals working with CRPS to inform the content and structure of the clinician-based portion of the HI-CRPS (CB-HI-CRPS), as well as refine the user manual.

Methods: Semi-structured cognitive interviews were conducted with health care professionals from a spectrum of disciplines working with CRPS. Assessment practices and scaling preferences for 15 assessment concepts were collected, relating directly to items on the CB-HI-CRPS. Interviews were transcribed and coded with emergent themes.

Results: Participants reported using the concepts from the CB-HI-CRPS 85.2% of the time. Physicians and nurses preferred present/absent judgements, while therapists used none/mild/moderate/severe scaling. Emerging themes highlighted assessment values, beliefs about CRPS, professional roles, and knowledge translation.

Conclusions: Lack of uniformity in terminology and assessment behaviours underscores the need for clear scoring frameworks and standardized assessment instructions to improve reliability across the proposed users of the HI-CRPS.

Level of evidence: Level 4.