OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to develop a content-valid conceptual model to capture patients' perceptions of therapy goal achievement within interdisciplinary multimodal pain treatment (IMPT) programs. This model serves as the theoretical foundation for a new patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) designed to evaluate IMPT effectiveness from the patient perspective.

METHODS: Concept elicitation followed the concept mapping approach, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques. 61 patients with primary chronic pain participated in focus groups and online surveys. Patient-generated treatment goals were collected, categorized, analyzed by the multidimensional scaling method and a subsequent hierarchical cluster analysis. Finally, the data were validated by an interdisciplinary expert panel to ensure conceptual accuracy and relevance for the conceptual model.

RESULTS: 210 therapy goals were collected. 127 were retained for the final model after a reduction process. Fifteen coherent clusters emerged from analysis, representing three overarching domains: functional restoration, therapy-related competence development, and psychological growth. This multidimensional structure reflects the biopsychosocial complexity of chronic pain and emphasizes that successful therapy is perceived as enhanced autonomy, regained participation, and self-empowerment rather than mere pain reduction.

CONCLUSIONS: The developed conceptual model provides a content-valid, patient-centered basis for assessing treatment goal achievement in IMPT. By integrating functional, cognitive, and emotional dimensions, it enables a differentiated assessment of patient-relevant treatment outcomes. Future work should focus on developing a conceptual framework and item generation, cognitive debriefing and validation, psychometric evaluation in larger and more diverse samples ensuring reliability, validity, and applicability of the final PROM across clinical and research settings.