Musculoskeletal care
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The expanding role of physiotherapists, with increasing use of services such as self-referral, means that demonstrating an ability to understanding and ask red-flag questions appropriately has never been more important. The present study investigated how physiotherapists define common red flags, how they ask red-flag questions, which red flags they routinely record and the importance that therapists attribute to individual red-flags. ⋯ If only certain red flags are being assessed, this may put patients at risk of having serious spinal pathologies going undetected. Thus, strategies encouraging therapists to ask all red-flag questions may be needed. The importance of the more recently recognized red flags may need to be emphasized to clinicians. Finally, the inconsistent way in which the red-flag questions were asked highlights a potential practical barrier to translating red-flag knowledge into clinical practice. There is a need to build on this work, using in-depth qualitative interviews, to gain a deeper understanding of how therapists understand and apply the red flags commonly used in back pain assessment.
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Musculoskeletal care · Mar 2015
ReviewThe understanding of pain by older adults who consider themselves to have aged successfully.
Despite an ageing population and an increased prevalence of chronic pain, the relationship between chronic pain and the concept of successful ageing is unclear. The aim of the present research was to explore older people's views on past and present experiences of pain, and its management, and how these experiences relate to their perceptions of successful ageing. ⋯ The findings of the present study suggest that predictable experiences of pain as one ages may contribute to an acceptance of pain as a biomedical certainty, a belief reinforced both by health professionals and society. However, one may have chronic pain and yet consider oneself to have aged successfully, and it should therefore be recognized that there is a distinction between having pain and having a problem with pain.