The Health Foundation’s LIMBIC (Learning to Improve the Management of Back Pain in the Community) project has recently been highlighted on the Institute of Health Management (IHM) website as a ‘team effort’ that ‘pays off’.
Nine practices in Dorset and Wiltshire have been involved in the Bournemouth University project, which is part of the Health Foundation’s ‘Engaging with Quality in Primary Care’ programme. It aims to improve the care of people with back pain and give GP practices the skills to better manage the treatment of patients.
In the article Dorset-based GP Dr Charles Campion-Smith, who is a back pain researcher at the university, explains how back pain sufferers have been a vital part in offering insight into their problems: ‘Back pain is a condition where GPs feel particularly frustrated because clinical guidelines and evidence don’t seem to fit with everyday practice and patient needs. We didn’t want this to be a one-off project, so it was important it produced transferable lessons, not just topic-specific learning.’
The Sunday Telegraph also recently reported: ‘the only experts in this area are those who live with back pain daily’. The paper quoted back pain sufferer of 40 years, Carole Cooper, a patient representative on the project as saying: ‘I found that most doctors didn’t listen to me and so I felt alone in finding a way to cope with my pain. Fortunately I eventually found that regular exercise was the way. I would like to prevent others from having to go through what I did. If my input makes doctors think differently about back pain, then future patients may find a solution much faster than I did.’