The effectiveness of generic self‐management interventions for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain on physical function, self‐efficacy, pain intensity and physical activity: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Generic self‐management programs aim to facilitate behavioural adjustment and therefore have considerable potential for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Our main objective was to collect and synthesize all data on the effectiveness of generic self‐management interventions for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain in terms of physical function, self‐efficacy, pain intensity and physical activity. Our secondary objective was to describe the content of these interventions, by means of classification according to the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy. We searched PubMed, CENTRAL, Embase and Psycinfo for eligible studies. Study selection, data extraction and risk of bias were assessed by two researchers independently. Meta‐analyses were only performed if the studies were sufficiently homogeneous and GRADE was used to determine the quality of evidence. We identified 20 randomized controlled trials that compared a self‐management intervention to any type of control group. For post‐intervention results, there was moderate quality evidence of a statistically significant but clinically unimportant effect for physical function and pain intensity, both favouring the self‐management group. At follow‐up, there was moderate quality evidence of a small clinically insignificant effect for self‐efficacy, favouring the self‐management group. All other comparisons did not indicate an effect. Classification of the behaviour change techniques showed large heterogeneity across studies. These results indicate that generic self‐management interventions have a marginal benefit for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain in the short‐term for physical function and pain intensity and for self‐efficacy in the long‐term, and vary considerably with respect to intervention content. SIGNIFICANCE: This study contributes to a growing body of evidence that generic self‐management interventions have limited effectiveness for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Furthermore, this study has identified substantial differences in both content and delivery mode across self‐management interventions.