Progress on our current review: “Experiences, perceptions and attitudes of health and social care professionals to management of children’s chronic non-cancer pain –a qualitative evidence synthesis”
In August 2025 we were delighted to share news of our new NESSIE review on the management of children’s chronic pain. Since then, the Team have been working hard to get the review up and running. In this blog post we will update you on the progress made so far.
Searching the evidence base
We have conducted an in-depth search of multiple online databases most likely to include the studies we are interested in (qualitative research of health and care professionals’ experiences of managing children’s chronic pain). We also searched the reference lists of eligible studies and contacted experts to check for additional studies. We found over 6500 publications!
Checking to see which studies meet our inclusion criteria
Two members from the review team have checked each publication to make sure that the research found met our criteria. This includes research that focuses on:
- managing children’s chronic pain (lasting 3 months or more) not related to cancer, and
- the experiences and attitudes of health and care professionals (such as doctors, nurses or psychologists for example)
Finding our Patient and Public Involvement Engagement (PPIE) Group
At NESSIE, each review team works with PPI representatives to make sure that our reviews are relevant to those who are affected by and use health services. You can read more about how why we do this in an earlier blog post. For this review we held an online information meeting in September 2025 for those who were interested in working with us. We are delighted to report that we have a fantastic group of PPIE members including those with lived experience of chronic pain as a child, parents and those working for charities related to children’s chronic pain.
Working with our Expert Group
In addition to working with our PPIE group we also have an expert group made up from health and care professionals working within health services and universities from across the United Kingdom.
Deciding on which studies to include in our review
When conducting qualitative reviews with lots of eligible studies a common approach is to work out which studies will best answer the research question and focus on those, this is called sampling (as you are only looking at a sample of the eligible studies). The sample might be to do with where in the world the research studies were conducted, the type of chronic pain conditions included or the type of participants for example. In November 2025 we met with our PPIE and Expert group to decide which studies we should focus on for our review. We decided to include studies:
- from a range of different countries
- looking at pain along with another condition or health issue e.g. mental health
- focusing on pain management during the Covid pandemic
- including patients above 18 years as long as it is a paediatric service
- where the definition of chronic pain was unclear or differed slightly from ours e.g. ’daily persistent pain’
If you would like to know more information about this review, then look out for future blogs. An easy way to stay informed is to subscribe so updates are automatically emailed to you. You can do this by completing your details on the right-hand side.
Blog by Dr Katie Thomson
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