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

Understanding the organizational readiness for behavior change is paramount for implementation success of new interventions and to avoid waste of resources. To assess organizational readiness of primary healthcare providers to refer users with chronic musculoskeletal pain for an online pain education program, named EducaDor program, at the secondary level of care. 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. 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 teams with multidisciplinary team showed higher levels of efficacy and commitment ([47.7%, n = 43]; [50%, n = 45], respectively) than Family Health teams only ([35.4%, n = 23]; [37%, n = 24]). In general, organizational readiness for referring SUS users to the EducaDor program was low in most of the Family Health teams. Family Health teams with multidisciplinary team showed higher levels of organizational readiness for implementing change than Family Health teams only. Not applicable.