Choice of analgesia in emergency and pre-hospital settings in patients with acute trauma pain- a concept mapping study with focus on values and preferences

Background:
Treatment of acute pain is of primary concern in emergency care, and health professionals have to constantly make choices between the available treatment options for their patients. Efficient treatment entails specific requirements to the applied analgesic agent; ease of administration, fast onset of pain relief, evidence of effect, acceptable balance between effects and side effects, favorable cost-effectiveness and accordance with users’ values and preferences. The GRADE Evidence to Decision framework entails these requirements, and represents a systematic and transparent system that health professionals can use to make well informed health care choices. Although all criteria within the GRADE framework are of equal importance in the decision making process, the criterion of values and preferences may have been overlooked in the process, possibly due to a lack of consensus on how to validly assess this concept. Thus, in this study we propose a new method to identify, organize and prioritize values and preferences associated with health care professionals’ choice of analgesia in emergency and pre-hospital settings for patients with acute trauma pain.