Priority setting process
Last year we held a 2 day “Think-Tank” at Keele which included a nationally representative multidisciplinary group of about 30 people who reflected on the findings from recent primary care trials of treatments for musculoskeletal pain and discussed recommendations and priorities for future trials.
The “think-tank” discussed methodological issues regarding recent trials including:
- The heterogeneity of patients within physiotherapy trials may make it difficult to capture true treatment effects (McCarthy and Cairns 2005)
- Inadequate identification of important patient subgroups (Hay et al 2005, McCarthy and Cairns 2005) may lead to insufficient targeting or individualisation of treatments
- There may be overestimation of the specific effects of interventions on individual patients and underestimation of the contribution of the non-specific effects of the interventions (Thomas et al 2004)
- Despite many trials now using a core set of recommended outcome measures (eg. Deyo et al 1998), we still fail to capture what is really important to patients
In order to try to address some of these possible explanations, following a number of small group workshops, the group came up with 22 recommendations for future research priorities. These priorities have been ranked by physiotherapists at the World Congress (2007), but we now need input from a wider research community.
We would be grateful if you could complete this form to rank the TOP FIVE priorities which will be used to inform the Musculoskeletal Pain Clinical Studies Group research strategy for the next 5 years. If there are priorities you feel are missing from this list, either add them to to the form or please send them by e-mail to csg-pain@arc.org.uk.
Contact details
For all enquiries and additional information, please contact: Professor Elaine Hay, chair of the musculoskeletal pain disorders CSG or the administrator Ms Claire Ashmore.
