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Education of Municipality-based Physiotherapists in Managing Disabling Low Back Pain - an Observational Study

NCT05794373 · Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 200

Last updated 2024-08-14

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

A consistent theme in the modern-day healthcare system is the difficulty of transferring research knowledge into clinical practice. Recently, it has been pointed out that this is a barrier for providing care that is evidence-based which may partly explain the growing burden of low back pain.

Low back pain, as all other musculoskeletal pain conditions is multidimensional where biomedical and psychological factors need to be accounted for, as well as the patient's social context. From the healthcare provider perspective, this requires skills that often goes beyond the basic training where clinicians need to be able to assess and manage the multiple domains in a patient-centered manner.

In Denmark, people living with disabling low back pain can be referred to a municipality-based rehabilitation program. This study seeks to investigate whether providing physiotherapists an evidence-based educational course on the management of low back pain will change patient-related outcomes. Likewise, we will investigate potential barriers and facilitators for implementing the skills the physiotherapists acquire in clinical practice.

If the project shows a favorable effect, it will allow for upscaling the intervention within and across municipalities. Moreover, a positive outcome may provide indications of what type of continuing education resources should be made available to help clinicians better manage complicated low back pain problems.

Conditions

  • Low Back Pain

Interventions

PROCEDURE

Standard physiotherapy for low back pain in a municipality setting

Patients (N=100) referred to a municipality-based rehabilitation for low back pain are included. The physiotherapists choose the rehabilitation strategy based on what they consider relevant for the patients. After the first 100 patients have been discharged from municipality care, the physiotherapists will participate in an educational intervention (12 sessions) focusing on the management of low back pain within a multidimensional framework. In the educational intervention, the participants will learn how to identify the presence of unhelpful thoughts and emotions and how to address these as part of the intervention. The course will thus be a mix of theoretical and practical teaching, including case supervision and feedback. Following the educational intervention, an additional 100 patients referred to the rehabilitation program will be included. The intervention is aimed at the physiotherapists where the patients will receive the best available care, before or after the intervention.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Spine Centre of Southern Denmark

    collaborator OTHER

  • Aalborg University Hospital

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Thorvaldur S Palsson, PhD · Aalborg University Hospital

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
65 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2023-03-01
Primary Completion
2025-04-30
Completion
2025-12-31

Countries

  • Denmark

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT05794373 on ClinicalTrials.gov