Under-treatment of depression at an academic chronic pain management clinic

Objective was to determine how capable pain management physicians at our institution were at recognizing and addressing depression in chronic pain patients. Methods: A quality improvement project was performed utilizing the PHQ-9 tool to determine how often physicians were recognizing depression along with analysis of patient data to determine how depression was treated. Results: Chronic pain physicians appeared capable of recognizing depression; however, there appeared to be discomfort in clinical diagnosis of the disease and a larger gap in comfort with treatment of the disease. Conclusions: As a result of our quality improvement project, we suggest increased interdisciplinary collaboration with psychiatry and im-proved education in depression amongst all chronic pain providers to improve patient care and outcomes.