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How physiotherapists attend to the human aspects of care when working with people with low back pain: a thematic analysis

Overview of attention for article published in Health Sociology Review, January 2023
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Among the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#37 of 292)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (92nd percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (75th percentile)

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34 X users

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8 Dimensions

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Title
How physiotherapists attend to the human aspects of care when working with people with low back pain: a thematic analysis
Published in
Health Sociology Review, January 2023
DOI 10.1080/14461242.2022.2161927
Pubmed ID
Authors

M. Dillon, R. Olson, K. Mescouto, N. Costa, J. Setchell

Abstract

Pain is a multidimensional experience. Physiotherapy has attempted to enhance earlier biomedical approaches to patient care through approaches like the 'biopsychosocial' model. Nevertheless, physiotherapy continues to focus on biomedical and/or behavioural aspects of care. We critically investigated how physiotherapists attend to human (psychosocial, emotional, existential, and moral) aspects of low back pain care. We co-analysed ethnographic data with researchers, patients, and physiotherapists using concepts of conforming, tinkering and abandoning 'scripts'. Data included observations of 28 physiotherapy interactions between 26 patients and 10 physiotherapists and 7 researcher-clinician dialogues. Analysis suggests when conforming to scripts, clinicians have difficulty recognising and responding to emotions; time pressure limited clinicians focus, and a biological focus often distracted from psychosocial aspects of people's back pain experiences. In contrast, tinkering with or abandoning scripts allowed space to broaden the focus. Drawing from theorists such as Butler (1999) and Gibson et al. (2020) our analysis contributes to health sociology, arguing that 'tinkering' with or 'abandoning' scripts can foster more humanistic, flexible and reflexive approaches to care. Although health sociologists have explored tinkering, abandoning is new; within physiotherapy, it encapsulates being able to respond with agility to non-physical elements of care without constraint from traditional ways of thinking and doing.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 34 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 13 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 13 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Unspecified 2 15%
Student > Master 2 15%
Researcher 2 15%
Professor 1 8%
Lecturer > Senior Lecturer 1 8%
Other 1 8%
Unknown 4 31%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 3 23%
Unspecified 2 15%
Psychology 2 15%
Arts and Humanities 1 8%
Sports and Recreations 1 8%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 4 31%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 21. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 June 2023.
All research outputs
#1,724,872
of 25,013,816 outputs
Outputs from Health Sociology Review
#37
of 292 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#36,200
of 471,306 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Health Sociology Review
#3
of 8 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,013,816 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 292 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.1. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 471,306 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 8 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 5 of them.