Features of the external environment during online medical group visits and interacting with the technology itself emerged as key themes in interviews with patients participating in the OPTIMUM trial.
The findings were published online in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health.
OPTIMUM, an NIH Collaboratory Trial led by Natalia Morone of Boston University and Boston Medical Center, is studying the addition of mindfulness-based stress reduction to usual care for patients with chronic low back pain, compared with usual care alone, with the goal of improving pain outcomes and reducing opioid prescriptions.
Patients’ experiences varied significantly during the online group medical visits and were influenced by social determinants of health. Exploring these differences in a racially and ethnically diverse group of participants enabled the researchers to begin developing a framework for comparing disparate experiences with virtual vs in-person mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions.
“On closer look, there are multiple variables at play that differentially affect how participants interact with the virtual setting,” the authors wrote. Jessica Barnhill of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was the lead author of the report.
OPTIMUM is supported within the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory through the NIH HEAL Initiative by a grant award administered by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Learn more about OPTIMUM.