Effectiveness of an ambulatory interprofessional rehabilitation on occupational performance of persons with chronic pain. A registry-based longitudinal cohort study.

Objective: To examine to what extent the Bern Ambulatory Interprofessional Rehabilitation results in statistically significant and clinically meaningful changes in self-rated quality of and satisfaction with occupational performance, health-related quality of life, pain intensity, and burden of suffering of persons with chronic pain. Design: Registry-based longitudinal cohort study. Setting: Department of Rheumatology and Immunology at the Bern University Hospital, Switzerland. Participants: A total of 172 participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Intervention: The Bern Ambulatory Interprofessional Rehabilitation is a biopsychosocial intervention for persons with chronic pain. Main measures: Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self Measure, European Quality of Life and Health Measure Visual Analogue Scale, and Visual Analogue Scale for pain intensity. Results: Changes over time were statistically significant and clinically meaningful for quality of occupational performance (post-treatment p ≤ 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI) [1.62-2.31], d = 0.8; follow-up p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [1.23-2.20], d = 0.70), satisfaction with occupational performance (post-treatment p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [2.35-3.22], d = 0.95; follow-up p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [1.95-3.14], d = 0.87), burden of suffering (post-treatment p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [0.25 to -0.42], d = 0.61; follow-up p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [0.20-0.40], d = 0.55), and health-related quality of life (post-treatment p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [6.30-15.66], d = 0.43; follow-up p ≤ 0.001, 95% CI [3.08-15.28], d = 0.36). Changes for pain intensity were not statistically significant nor clinically meaningful (post-treatment p = 0.676, 95% CI [-3.85 to 5.45], d = 0.03; follow-up p = 0.243, 95% CI [-8.91 to 1.72], d = -0.09). Conclusions: This study confirms the short- and mid-term effectiveness of the Bern Ambulatory Interprofessional Rehabilitation on occupational performance, burden of suffering, and health-related quality of life of persons with chronic pain.