Research to improve consultations for people with back pain – new physiotherapy study
A Southampton physiotherapist has won substantial charity funding to carry out research which will lead to significant improvements in consultations for people with back pain.
Dr Lisa Roberts from the University of Southampton’s School of Health Professions and Rehabilitation Sciences has been awarded a senior lectureship in physiotherapy of £365,767 over five years by the Arthritis Research Campaign.
Previous research has suggested that the patient-therapist relationship is more important to success than treatment techniques. Dr Roberts plans to build on this work and investigate how clinical decisions are made by physiotherapists and patients with back pain, in a series of three studies.
In the first study Dr Roberts will visit patients with back pain at home to find out what they expect from attending the out-patient department at Southampton. She will then observe the consultation, interview staff about what they think they said to patients, and ask the patients about what they think they heard.
Dr Roberts and her team will then observe a series of physiotherapy assessment and treatment sessions, recording conversations, body language and how decisions were made about patients’ care.
She will then run a series of educational workshops for physiotherapists recruited from Hampshire and Dorset to enhance communication and decision-making and measure what effect this has on health outcomes and satisfaction for patients with back pain.
“It has been said that communication is the most important aspect of practice that health professionals have to master,” explained Dr Roberts, who is both a clinical physiotherapist and part-time lecturer. “We hope to find out if having a good relationship between physiotherapists and patients improves the treatment outcome for patients. We want to help health professionals maximise their communication and decision-making skills and enable patients to get as much as they can from their consultations. It will be both challenging and exciting to research this area and the findings are potentially relevant to all patient consultations.”
The Arthritis Research Campaign, the fourth largest medical research charity in the UK, with an annual income of more than £30m, is committed to encouraging and supporting research by allied health professionals (AHPs) such as nurses, physiotherapists, podiatrists and occupational therapists and has funded seven senior academic posts for AHPs.
