SETBack – WP2 observation LBP study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An ethnographically-informed observational study exploring the experiences of patients returning to healthcare services with persistent back pain.
IRAS ID
367118
Contact name
Lisa Osborn-Jenkins
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Southampton
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
GRT0723, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS) Research & Development PhD Fellowship
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 1 months, 11 days
Research summary
Low back pain is the world-leading cause of disability. Most people (65%) have low back symptoms that reoccur or continue a year after onset. Back pain often persists and is considered a long-term condition rather than separate episodes. As many as 10 million people are estimated to live with persistent back pain in the UK. Many people with back pain (58%) will seek healthcare. This combined effect of lots of people with back pain, high-recurrence rates and high care-seeking behaviours makes back pain a burden to individuals and primary care health services.
Clinical guidelines for back pain strongly recommend self-management but do not specify the content of self-management advice, nor how to manage patients when the advice given has been ineffective and they return seeking help. There is a specific gap in the literature about the needs of people returning to services who may have had trouble with self-management. Therefore, this research aims to explore and describe the observed experiences of patients with persistent low back pain together with clinicians in the management of their condition when returning to primary care services, to better understand patients perceived needs and why they return.
In this ethnographically-informed qualitative study, data will be collected from observation and audio-recorded return consultations with people with persistent back pain. Patients and clinicians will separately be followed up with a short semi-structure interviews. The sample with comprise up to 15 adult patients from the south of England in primary care NHS settings in 15 consultations, with up to 15 clinicians (GPs and physiotherapists). Reflexive thematic analysis will be both inductive and deductive. This will allow the analysis to be both descriptive, theoretically-informed, and analytical to produce a detailed account and contextual understanding of patients’ return consultation experiences to answer the research question.REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/SC/0064
Date of REC Opinion
17 Mar 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion