Assessment of organizational readiness for implementing an online pain education program for chronic musculoskeletal pain in public health: a cross-sectional study.

Abstract Background: Understanding the organizational readiness for behavior change is paramount for implementation success of new interventions and to avoid waste of resources. Objective: To assess organizational readiness of primary healthcare providers to refer users with chronic musculoskeletal pain for an online pain education program at the secondary level of care. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study using an online survey. We used the Organizational Readiness for Implementing Change questionnaire (ORIC-Br) to assess organizational readiness. We interpreted the domains of change efficacy and change commitment in terms of means (mean scores ≥4 indicates ready for implementation change in each domain) or proportions (≥50% of respondents considering scores ≥4 for each domain). Descriptive analyses were used to depict respondent characteristics and overall ORIC-Br scores. Results: 155 primary healthcare providers participated in the study (39.2 ±10.6 years old, 87.7% [n=136] women). 65 of them (41.9%) work at Family Health teams only and 90 (58.1%) work at Family Health teams with multidisciplinary team. The mean of ORIC-Br score was 3.4±1.1 (95% CI: 3.2 to 3.5). Primary healthcare units that have Family Health team only seem to be not ready for implementing change in terms of efficacy (64.6%, n=42) and commitment (63.1%, n=41). Family Health teams with multidisciplinary team seem to be more ready for implementing change in terms of commitment (50%, n=45) and not ready in terms of efficacy (52.3%, n=47). Conclusion: Organizational readiness for referring SUS users to the EducaDor program was low in most of the Family Health teams.