Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs towards patients with chronic low back pain among final year School of Therapeutic Sciences students at the University of the Witwatersrand: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Knowledge of pain influences health care providers’ attitudes and beliefs about patients with chronic low back pain. In turn, affects the choice of management approach. However, little is known about this topic among students pursuing various undergraduate health science programmes. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of knowledge of pain, attitudes and beliefs about patients with chronic low back pain, and establish their association with demographic characteristics among final year undergraduate students of the School of Therapeutic Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. This is a cross-sectional study where two self-administered questionnaires (NPQ for knowledge of physiology of pain and HC-PAIRS for attitudes and beliefs) were distributed to the study population of 224 students, and the demographic details of participants were collected. Out of 224 eligible students, 145(65%) participated in this study which represents the analytical population with female respondence (n = 115, 79%). The overall NPQ-mean score is 6.01(SD 1.98), and the mean scores were significant by gender (0.05) and across the programmes of study (0.005). Physiotherapy had the highest NPQ-mean scores 6.97(1.77) while occupational therapy had the lowest NPQ-mean scores 5.21(2.09). An overall HC-PAIRS-mean score is 63.1(8.9). Females had significantly more negative attitudes and beliefs about patients with chronic low back pain (p-value = 0.04). There is no significance difference HC-PAIRS-mean scores by age, history of low back pain and programme of study. NPQ-mean scores has an inverse relationship with HC-PAIRS-mean scores (p-value = 0.0002). There is a deficit in the level of knowledge of neurophysiology of pain among the final year, School of Therapeutic Science students. Their attitudes and beliefs regarding patients with chronic low back pain are negative. Knowledge of pain influences the attitudes and beliefs about patients with chronic low back pain. Therefore, changing the attitudes of students would require improving their knowledge of pain by updating their curriculi for chronic pain content with the current management recommendations.

Keywords: Knowledge of pain, attitude, beliefs, patients with chronic low back pain, undergraduate students