• Niina Maria Karttunen, Juha Turunen, Riitta Ahonen, and Sirpa Hartikainen.
• School of Pharmacy, University of Eastern Finland, PO Box 1627, Kuopio 70211, Finland.
• Age Ageing. 2014 Nov 1;43(6):845-50.

Backgroundpersistent pain is a major problem in older people, but little is known about older persons' opinion about the treatment of persistent pain.Objectivethe objective of this study was to investigate the factors associated with older participants having chronic musculoskeletal pain and hoping persistently that physician would pay more attention to the pain management.Methodsthis 3-year follow-up study was a part of large population-based Geriatric Multidisciplinary Strategy for the Good Care of the Elderly (GeMS) study. The population sample (n = 1000) of the GeMS study was randomly selected from older inhabitants (≥75 years) of Kuopio city, Finland, and participants were interviewed annually in the municipal health centre or in the participant's current residence by three study nurses. The current substudy included participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain (n = 270). Participants were asked specifically whether they hoped that more attention would be paid to pain management by the physician.Resultsat baseline, 41% of the community-dwelling older participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain hoped the physician would pay more attention to pain management. Of those participants, 49% were still continuing to hope after 1 year and 31% after 2 years. A persistent hope to receive more attention to pain management was associated with poor self-rated health (OR: 2.94; 95% CI: 1.04-8.30), moderate-to-severe pain (OR: 3.46; 95% CI: 1.42-8.44), and the daily use of analgesics (OR: 4.16; 95% CI: 1.08-16.09).Conclusionphysicians need to take a more active role in the process of recognising, assessing and controlling persistent pain in older people.© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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