What is the Effect of a Course for Treatment Providers on Their Patient Outcome

NCT ID: NCT00902642

Last Updated: 2009-05-15

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 364 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2004-09-30
• Study Completion Date: 2006-08-31

Brief Summary

The goal is to acquire more in-depth knowledge on physical therapists' attitudes towards and beliefs about psychosocial factors in back pain, how physical therapists integrate psychosocial factors into their clinical practice and the effects of a training program for physical therapists in psychosocial factors on clinical practice and thereby on patient outcome in terms of disability, pain, catastrophizing, and treatment satisfaction.

Detailed Description

Neck and back pain continue to be extremely common, with a high prevalence and wide socio-economic consequences all over the industrialized world. Through the years a growing interest has risen for other factors than the pure biomedical or biomechanical. This has led to a new clinical model for the treatment of back pain; the biopsychosocial model of illness. Treatment based on the biopsychosocial model not only must address the biological basis of symptoms, but must incorporate the full range of social and psychological factors that have been shown to affect pain, distress and disability.

Since there is today strong evidence indicating that psychosocial factors have a greater impact on disability then biomechanical or biomedical factors and strong evidence that psychosocial factors are strongly linked to the transition from acute to chronic pain, concept of psychosocial risk factors has been developed. Although the concept of psychosocial risk factors still is relatively new, there seems to be an international consensus about the importance of psychosocial risk factors for the prevention of the development of chronic pain but there appears to be considerable uncertainty about the clinical application.

Health care providers' (HCPs') attitudes and beliefs appear to influence the information they provide to patients. This may subsequently result in different patient outcome depending on the HCPs' attitudes and beliefs. Physical therapists attitudes and beliefs are relatively unexplored but seem to have an effect on patients' attitudes and beliefs, which can affect patient outcome in terms of sick leave, health care use and function.

HCP attitudes and beliefs towards psychosocial factors are relatively unexplored. Yet, it seems physical therapists do not necessarily accept new evidence-based information and may have difficulties in applying evidence-based information in their clinical practice. Implementation and dissemination of evidence-based psychosocial factors requires favourable attitudes, knowledge and skills to ensure a behavioural change on behave of the physical therapists.

Conditions

Pain

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: CROSSOVER
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

control group

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Course on psychosocial factors

an eight day university training course for physical therapists designed to integrating psychosocial factors in clinical practice on a patient level

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

an eight day university training course designed to integrating psychosocial factors in clinical practice on a patient level

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

an eight day university training course on psychosocial factors for physical therapists

Interventions

an eight day university training course designed to integrating psychosocial factors in clinical practice on a patient level

an eight day university training course on psychosocial factors for physical therapists

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Musculoskeletal pain,
• Age between 18 and 65

Exclusion Criteria

• Sick leave for more than 3 months during the past year as a result of present the musculoskeletal pain problem

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 65 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

Örebro University, Sweden

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

School of Law, Psychology, and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Örebro County Council

OTHER_GOV

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Center for Health and Medical Psychology and School of Law, Psychology, and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

Principal Investigators

Steven J Linton, PH.D.

Role: STUDY_DIRECTOR

Center for Health and Medical Psychology and School of Law, Psychology, and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

Locations

Mälardalens högskola

Eskilstuna, , Sweden

Countries

Sweden

References

Overmeer T, Boersma K, Denison E, Linton SJ. Does teaching physical therapists to deliver a biopsychosocial treatment program result in better patient outcomes? A randomized controlled trial. Phys Ther. 2011 May;91(5):804-19. doi: 10.2522/ptj.20100079. Epub 2011 Mar 30.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 21451098 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

M-127

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id