Pain science in physiotherapy education
Pain science in physiotherapy education
Advancing contemporary pain knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and clinical hehavior of future physiotherapists.
Current health education still has mainly a biomedical perspective, thus being insufficient for helping future physiotherapists in feeling confident and competent in delivering person-centered care for people with musculoskeletal pain.
Therefore, the overarching aim of this thesis of Anneke Beetsma was to improve comtemporary pain knowledge, beliefs, and clinical behavior of future physiotherapists.
PART I – Assessing contemporary pain knowledge, beliefs and biopsychosocial attitudes
The Knowledge and Attitudes of Pain (KNAP) questionnaire was developed and useful for evaluating modern pain knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of future physiotherapists. Physiotherapy and manual therapy students develop more contemporary pain knowledge and biopsychosocial attitudes in the progressing years of curriculum, in line with clinical guidelines. A pain education course had the greatest positive impact. An overview of assessment instruments to evaluate outcomes of Pain Science Education (PSE) is provided with the intent of helping clinicians and researchers using PSE to choose the optimal instruments for their assessment needs. Combining quantitative instruments with qualitative interview may be required to assess conceptual change in depth.
PART II – Adopting and evaluating a biopsychosocial approach towards musculoskeletal pain in health care education.
To contribute to the main goal of this thesis, insights were gained into essential pain-related topics for undergraduate physiotherapy students, the meaningful contributions of rehabilitation, and the impact of an educational intervention. These findings may contribute to adapting and improving physical therapy education and ultimately lead to better clinical practice.