Actionable companion · School leadership and instructional improvement

From leadership research to district action: Pain Retrained: Participant Perspectives of an Online, Interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Education Programme

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

ABSTRACT Background Education is considered a foundational component of chronic pain treatment. In response to challenges relating to accessibility and scalability, health services have increasingly adopted online formats for delivering pain education programmes. However, little is known about how patients experience these digital interventions, particularly in relation to engagement, meaning‐making, and perceived impact. This study aimed to explore participant experiences of completing an online education programme for chronic pain. Methods The study adopted an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodological framework, which informed the development of the interview schedule, the sampling strategy, and the analytic process. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 10 adults who completed a 6‐week programme, Pain Retrained, which delivered education on chronic pain in a group setting via Microsoft Teams. The intervention was provided by an interdisciplinary team with 2 h of clinician contact per week. Results Analyses identified two principal themes, “It was a stretch” and “And now I can move on”. Participants expanded their understanding of chronic pain from a biomedical model to a more integrated biopsychosocial perspective, which supported a constructive shift toward engaging with evidence‐based care and self‐management. Conclusion This study offers novel insights into participants' experiences of an online pain education programme. The online format enhanced accessibility and made a longer‐duration intervention more feasible for individuals. This structure allowed relational and temporal processes to support reconceptualization and importantly, reorientation to evidence‐based care. Findings highlight the value of participatory, interdisciplinary education delivered in a format that accommodates the realities of living with chronic pain. Significance Statement This research advances understanding of how education can lay the foundation for recovery in chronic pain. A pivotal contribution is the identification of reorientation to evidence‐based treatments as a core process within pain education. These findings extend current models of pain education by highlighting experiential elements critical to change. The insights offer actionable direction for clinicians and service leadership seeking to develop, implement or refine accessible pain education interventions.

A 90-day district inquiry

1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
2. Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
3. Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Maura McCarron; Francis Agnew; Claire Briggs; Jason Brooks; Martin Dempster; Jackie Granleese; Danielle Rainey; Kevin E. Vowles. Pain Retrained: Participant Perspectives of an Online, Interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Education Programme. European Journal of Pain (London, England) (2026-02-01). https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.70223

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.