Students' Understanding and Beliefs About Pain Before and After a One-day Pain Science Education Conference: an Intervention

Students' Understanding and Beliefs About Pain Before and After a One-day Pain Science Education Conference: an Intervention

Students' Understanding and Beliefs About Pain Before and After a One-day Pain Science Education Conference: a Mixed-methods Evaluation

The beliefs held by students lead to behaviours in response to their pain which can be both helpful or a hindrance to how they manage their pain. The one-day education event aims to educate the cohort on the contemporary scientific understanding of persistent pain using a mixture of methods. It is hoped this event will result in an improvement in the alignment of beliefs and behaviours to contemporary understanding of persistent pain. The principal aim is to evaluate the pre-post knowledge and beliefs about pain following a one-day pain education event in year 12 students, aged 16 or above.

The students will be asked to complete questionnaires three times relating to their understanding and beliefs relating and intended behaviour in the presence of pain. Once at the start of the conference and once at the end, then finally after 3 months. The questionnaire will gather demographic information (age, gender, ethnicity and any history of persistent pain). There will also be a series of multiple-choice questions relating to knowledge and beliefs about persistent pain. The three time points of questionnaire completion will see the students complete the same questionnaire except they will not have to repeat demographic questions. The questionnaire should take 5-10 minutes to complete each time. The questionnaires will be provided online and links will be provided to participants. This is a non-randomised controlled trial and a second school selected as it is part of the same group of schools and equally matched according to the English Indices of Deprivation 2019. This school will complete the survey at the same time points.

High school students receiving a day of pain science education in multiple formats, lectures, experiential, completing a task which consolidates the information.

Helps to identify if participant beliefs are biomedical or biopsychosocial focussed, 12-item (Edwards et al, 1992, Walsh and Radcliffe, 2002). There are 2 scales within the PBQ: the organic beliefs scale has 8 items, with score ranges from 8-48, lower scores indicate less biomedical views and higher scores indicate more biomedical views. The psychological scale within the PBQ has 4 items with a score range of 4-24, a higher score indicates more biopsychosocial beliefs about pain and a lower score indicates less biopsychosocial beliefs.

The Concept of Pain Inventory-Adult was designed for assessing knowledge and beliefs about pain science (Pate et al, 2022). It is a 13-item questionnaire. Higher COPI-Adult scores reflect greater alignment with contemporary pain science (Total scores can range from 0-52).

Participants will be asked what actions they would take if they had pain with regards to medication, scans, daily activity, exercise and work either based on yes/no answers or four to five multiple choice answers. The percentage of recommendations in keeping with guidelines were measured from 0-100% with lower scores indicating intended behaviours that were not in keeping with guidelines.

Inclusion Criteria: Students at two specified schools in North Yorkshire who had been offered the pain study day in year 12 or are in the intervention or control school in year 12 or 13 Aged above 16. Providing consent to participate. Exclusion Criteria: Students not providing consent.