Acupuncture in the Emergency Department for Pain Management

Our goal is to use the R01 mechanism to conduct a two-arm multisite, feasibility RCT (Acupuncture vs Usual Care) to refine procedures for conducting a future fully powered multi-site RCT. The effort will be led by the BraveNet Coordinating Center at Einstein and include 3 BraveNet PBRN sites University Hospitals/ Case Western Reserve University (UH/Case), Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), and University of California-San Diego (UCSD). During Year 1 (Aim 1), we will develop the manualized acupuncture intervention with consensus from experts in the delivery of acupuncture for acute pain. At the end of Year 1 (prior to the start of the RCT), a study investigator meeting will be held to ensure consistent training of all study coordinators and acupuncturists to the study data collection, human subjects, intervention delivery, and reporting requirements. In Year 2-3 (Aim 2), we will enroll 165 participants (55 per site) into the randomized trial (1:1 assignment to Acupuncture or Usual Care) over a ~9-month enrollment period for each site. Sites will participate in the study sequentially, thus general findings from the implementation evaluation may be used to improve implementation at subsequent sites. Treatment outcomes include pain intensity, state anxiety and pain medication utilization within the ED (via EHR data extraction). In Aim 2a, 75 structured qualitative interviews of ED providers, staff, study acupuncturists (~10 per site) and acupuncture patients (~15 per site) and direct observation at each site will be used to identify barriers and facilitators of successful implementation. The Implementation Evaluation includes two broad categories of data: implementation outcomes (collected in Aim 2 as the feasibility study is conducted at each site) and explanatory factors (Aim 2a).