Charting physiotherapy students’ attitudes toward people with chronic pain as they progress through their undergraduate programme: An observational study

Abstract

Background: Healthcare professionals' (HCPs') attitudes towards pain influence their pain management. Attitudes about pain should be aligned with the evidence-base at the pre-registration stage of an HCP's career but pain education at undergraduate level is often lacking, and negative attitudes can pervade HCP practise. Previous studies investigating change in pain attitudes in undergraduate HCPs are crosssectional in nature and frequently report minimal change in pain attitudes.Objectives: To investigate medical students' attitudes and beliefs towards people with chronic pain over the course of their Scottish undergraduate programme. Design: Five year observational study.Setting: A Scottish university medical school.Participants: Medical students were recruited in first year and followed up to their final year (year one n=205/244, year two n=190/245, year three n=132/279, year four n=110/262, year four n=159/260) for five years.Outcome Measure: The Health Care Providers' Pain and Impairment Relationship Scale (HC-PAIRS with scores ranging from 15-105) was completed annually.Results: A two-way ANOVA found that attitudes and beliefs improved significantly (p<0.01) from first to final year (10.0±10.0). Medics showed a gradual reduction in scores (signifying improved attitudes) annually.Conclusions: This is the first known published study to chart changes in the same cohort of medical students' attitudes and beliefs towards people with chronic pain over time. Changes in attitudes improved steadily over the five year medical degree course. Future work should explore which aspects of degree courses, if any, impact upon attitudes and beliefs towards people with chronic pain so that courses can be enhanced accordingly. Contribution of the Paper:• This is the first known published observational study of pain attitudes in the same group of medical students from first to final year of undergraduate training.• It confirms the findings from previous cross-sectional literature that there is an improvement in attitudes amongst medical students during the course of their usual undergraduate training.• The change in attitudes whilst of a meaningful magnitude, is relatively modest and there is clear potential for improvement.