Health care practitioners’ attitudes and beliefs about low back pain: A systematic search and critical review of available measurement tools

AnnetteBishop, Elaine Thomas and Nadine E. Foster

This systematic review looked at the available measurement tools for surveying attitudes, beliefs and practice behaviour of HCPs about back pain.  This review identified only five tools and demonstrated limited reporting of their validity and reliability. The tools were the Attitudes to Back Pain scale for musculoskeletal practitioners (ABS.mp), a fear avoidance beliefs tool, the Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) adapted for HCPs, the Health Care Providers’ Pain and Impairment Relationship Scale (HC-PAIRS) and the Pain Attitudes and Beliefs Scale for Physiotherapists (PABS.PT). The HC-PAIRS and PABS.PT have undergone the most thorough testing to date, but gaps in the properties of all the tools remain, particularly test–retest reliability and responsiveness. Further development and testing of existing tools should be a priority to ensure they are robust and valid measures of attitudes and beliefs of HCPs about back pain.

Pain, 2007, 132(1-2), 91-101

Link to Abstract