Musculoskeletal care
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Musculoskeletal care · Mar 2016
'What I Really Needed Was the Truth'. Exploring the Information Needs of People with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.
UK guidelines indicate that individuals with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) require information and education to support self-management. The present qualitative study explored the specific information requirements of patients with CRPS and provides insight into how health professionals can best provide this. ⋯ The reported lack of information resulted in a struggle for participants to understand their condition, and access professional expertise and appropriate treatments. Health professionals require access to accurate information in order to share this with individuals with CRPS in a timely manner. Easily accessible and high-quality patient resources to facilitate early referral for expertise are required. A central resource to identify local expertise would be valuable.
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Musculoskeletal care · Dec 2015
ReviewPain Management Programmes for Non-English-Speaking Black and Minority Ethnic Groups With Long-Term or Chronic Pain.
Increasing ethnic diversity in the UK means that there is a growing need for National Health Service care to be delivered to non-English-speaking patients. The aims of the present systematic review were to: (1) better understand the outcomes of chronic pain management programmes (PMPs) for ethnic minority and non-English-speaking patients and (2) explore the perspectives on and experiences of chronic pain for these groups. A systematic review identified 26 papers meeting the inclusion criteria; no papers reported on the outcomes of PMPs delivered in the UK. ⋯ There is a need for further research to explore these cultural beliefs in non-English-speaking groups in the UK. Culturally sensitive evaluations of interpreted PMPs with long-term follow-up are needed to assess the effectiveness of current provision. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Musculoskeletal care · Jun 2015
Intra- and Inter-Patient Symptom Variability in Fibromyalgia: Results of a 90-Day Assessment.
Symptoms of fibromyalgia (FM)--chronic widespread pain, fatigue, unrefreshing sleep, dyscognition etcetera--present with varying degrees of severity in different individuals; however, studies reporting daily estimates of variability of symptoms are sparse. Given the limited literature on the stability and variability of FM symptoms, the purpose of the present study was to determine the feasibility of daily visual analogue, self-report measures to assess daily variability and time trends in core FM symptoms. Ten female patients completed daily assessments of common FM symptoms (pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression, stress, cognitive dysfunction, unrefreshing sleep and lightheadedness) for approximately 90 days. ⋯ Average symptom intensity does not appear to be related to the amount of symptom change within individuals. The results of the present study confirm that intensive longitudinal study, using comprehensive symptom assessment in patients with FM, is both possible and informative, in the sense that a rich description of the daily experience of living with FM can be obtained. Future work, utilizing larger samples, will offer the opportunity to investigate better the causes, consequences and correlates of the daily ups and downs of key symptoms that compromise quality of life in patients with FM.
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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.