Could remembering a validating consultation help people with chronic pain recall health information?

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Managing chronic pain involves cognitive and emotional challenges that may affect treatment adherence. Remembering clinician advice is therefore important, and clinician behaviours may influence these processes.

Researchers recruited 245 adults online who had experienced chronic pain for at least three months. They investigated whether recounting personal memories of healthcare experiences perceived as validating versus invalidating influenced subsequent recall of health information. Participants had to be at least 18 years old, fluent in English, have no hearing difficulties or mental health conditions, and have attended at least one healthcare visit in the previous two years.

Participants were quasi-randomly assigned to describe a previously experienced validating or invalidating consultation. Before and after the task, they rated their pain intensity and pain-related fear. They then listened to 20 health messages and were later asked to recall them in an incidental memory test. The primary outcome was incidental recall, measured as the likelihood of recalling each of the 20 messages; secondary outcomes included pain intensity and pain-related fear.

Researchers analysed recall using a binomial generalized linear mixed-effects model that accounted for individual differences in pain intensity, pain-related fear, immersion in the task, age, sex and pain duration. Those who described a validating consultation had 19% higher odds of recalling each message, based on model estimates, than those in the invalidating condition. The association was not mediated by changes in pain-related fear.

The findings suggest that remembering validating consultations might improve retention of health information and that clinician validation could be a potential strategy to support cognitive functioning in people living with chronic pain.