Patient-reported wait times and the impact of living with chronic pain on their quality of life: A waiting room survey in chronic pain clinics in Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec

AbstractBackground Wait-times at Canadian multidisciplinary pain clinics have been reported as excessive for nearly two decades.Aims To gain insight into the patient experience of waiting for chronic pain specialty care.Methods A cross-sectional survey of new patients waiting for an appointment was conducted in 6 multidisciplinary pain clinics in Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba between February 2020 and October 2022. One clinic was pediatric. Participants were asked about the length of time they waited for their appointment since being referred, their quality-of-life, healthcare professionals seen while waiting, and an open-ended question “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?”Results Among the 484 adult and 99 pediatric respondents, 53% of adults and 82% of children reported wait times under 6 months, whereas 22% of adults and 4% of children waited longer than a year. Between 52-63% of adults and 29-48% of children reported being affected by chronic pain “quite a bit” or “extremely” on measures of quality of life. The most visited healthcare professionals while waiting for a pain clinic appointment were family doctors/nurse practitioners for adults, and physiotherapists for children. Qualitative analysis of open-ended question responses revealed 8 themes: system navigation issues, administrative issues, decreased quality of life, distress, self-advocacy, coping strategies, communication, and distrust.Conclusions Our findings provide real-time regional snapshots into the impact of long wait times experienced by Canadians living with chronic pain. There is an urgent need to better support patients during the waiting period. Expanding technologies such as electronic consultation hold great promise.