# Building Better Interdisciplinary Pain Teams Across Disciplines

> **NIH VA IK2** · VETERANS ADMIN PALO ALTO HEALTH CARE SYS · 2024 · —

## Abstract

Background: Chronic pain disproportionately affects Veterans and is often managed in VA primary care.
Because chronic pain may exhibit physical, emotional, social, and existential dimensions, individualized,
interdisciplinary approaches are clinically important. Various pain team models have been implemented in
diverse clinical settings, and some are effective. However, to meet the complex needs of specific patients, pain
teams often benefit from dynamic membership and different providers (e.g., pharmacist) fulfilling specific roles
or tasks (e.g., opioid tapering). The providers who come together around one patient may or may not work
together regularly or in the same combinations on other patients. In fact, dynamic teams and bounded teams
often overlap. Compared with bounded teams, dynamic teaming, which I refer to hereafter as “teaming”, is a
more complex process with a smaller empiric research base. Whether teams are bounded or dynamic (and
often they have elements of both), they need to coordinate/negotiate and understand their mutual roles and
role boundaries to serve patients effectively. Facilitating “teaming”, through establishing scaffolds, represents a
strategy for organizing providers with dynamic membership around shared patient care goals.
Significance/Impact: Developing a “teaming” intervention to facilitate collaboration around the numerous tasks
involved in providing good and safe pain management is particularly timely as it aligns with the VA ORD clinical
priorities. This work will be done in partnership with Veterans, providers, and operational leaders from the
national pain program office to ensure alignment with VA pain and opioid initiatives.
Innovation: The proposed intervention will create team scaffolds and a teaming facilitation process for
interdisciplinary providers that participate in pain care tasks. The integration of organizational theory and co-
design principals and strategies to produce and test a teaming intervention represents a novel approach for
improving processes of pain care in the VA.
Specific Aims: This proposal seeks to address scientific gaps through three projects. AIM1: Identify roles,
structures and processes of interdisciplinary providers involved in primary care based chronic pain management.
AIM2: Co-design an intervention to improve interdisciplinary “teaming” with VA providers and Veterans. AIM3:
Pilot test the feasibility and acceptability of a teaming intervention for improved pain management at one site.
Methodology: To yield insights on teams, teamwork and teaming and AIM3 study features for trial design, AIM1a
will complete a systematic review of randomized controlled trials of chronic pain care in primary care settings.
To characterize the concept of dynamic teaming and garner insights on teaming for chronic pain in PACTs, 1b
will use semi-structured interviews to explore experiences and perceptions of PACT providers, pharmacists, pain
specialists, non-pharmacologic providers, and superv...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10759392
- **Project number:** 5IK2HX003077-03
- **Recipient organization:** VETERANS ADMIN PALO ALTO HEALTH CARE SYS
- **Principal Investigator:** Karleen Frances Giannitrapani
- **Activity code:** IK2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-01-01 → 2026-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10759392

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10759392, Building Better Interdisciplinary Pain Teams Across Disciplines (5IK2HX003077-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10759392. Licensed CC0.

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