Abstract Mechanism-based clinical reasoning was shown to be the recommended strategy for clinical decision making for physical therapy management of musculoskeletal pain. The five mechanisms proposed were central sensitization, peripheral sensitization, and sympathetically mediated pain, cognitive-affective and nociceptive. Earlier study found that there was prevalence of all mechanisms among patients with MSK pain. The objective of this study was to assess the immediate effects of a 2-weeks training session on the clinical decision-making among post-graduate physical therapy students. The training session comprised of two contact lecture sessions, online study material for duration of two weeks. Pre and post assessment was done qualitatively using a pre-provided case example and objective structured evaluation. Additionally, the participants also answered seven-point Likert scaling for their attitudes and opinions towards the mechanism-based clinical reasoning of pain. Overall, the responses were favorable and there were observable changes recorded post-training compared to pre-training. Thus training on mechanism-based classification of pain improved clinical decision-making skills of post-graduate physical therapy students.
Keywords: Education; Training; Pain Sciences; Clinical Reasoning.