Articles: back-pain.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Evaluating the representativeness of a cohort study of low back pain: Using electronic health record data to make direct comparisons of study participants with non-participants from the study population.
Representativeness is an important component of generalizability. Few studies have rigorously examined the representativeness of randomized trials or observational studies of pain or musculoskeletal conditions with regards to a wide range of factors beyond age, sex, race, and ethnicity. We conducted the first study of a pain condition that uses individual-level data to directly compare the enrolled study sample to the population from which it was drawn. ⋯ This approach can be considered as a standard method to examine the representativeness of study samples in pain research. PERSPECTIVE: This article illustrates how electronic health record data can be used to directly compare the representativeness of participants in a study of pain to the study population from which participants were selected. This approach should be considered as a standard method to examine the representativeness of study samples during reporting.
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Pain medicine is an advanced medical subspecialty incorporating trainees from diverse primary disciplines. A curriculum that does not assess or promote the trainees' differential expertise developed from their primary specialties may silo instead of promoting collaborative learning in a multidisciplinary subspecialty. ⋯ We created a novel note-taking and knowledge-sharing platform, anchored by a well-established case-based educational strategy, to improve the learning environment and knowledge retention for multidisciplinary trainees with heterogeneous baseline knowledge.