The control group received standard of care, including standard patient counseling from the surgical teams.

In conjunction with oncologic psychology and plastic surgery, an instrument was developed to be provided as a single-paged paper handout to the intervention group. The instrument included information about expectations for pain control, information about the pain scale, and examples of opioid and adjunct medications which may be used as part of a multi-modal approach to pain control during the perioperative period.

The handout was single-paged (front and back), and was titled Pain After Surgery: What to Expect. The handout starts with information on rating pain and expectations for control of pain, not complete absence of pain, after surgery. Mutli-modal approach to pain control is then discussed, including pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic methods that may be used for pain control by the perioperative team and postoperatively.

Opioid consumption will be calculated from patient report of remaining narcotics at the postoperative appointment and the total opioid amount prescribed, from the medical record.

Patient report of subjective and objective pain control after surgery will be collected on a postoperative survey. Objective pain control will be scored by asking patients to circle a pain score on a scale of 0 to 10. This is a continuous scale used to score pain with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain. Subjective pain will be rated by asking participants to state yes or no for control of pain and state yes or no if pain interfered with walking, sleeping, and activities of daily living.

Patient reported knowledge of pain control will be collected on the preoperative and postoperative survey. Patients will be asked to circle yes or no to feeling like the participant had enough information about pain control and about surgery.