Patients with low back pain in Malawi: Their attitudes and beliefs on their low back pain

Low back pain (LBP) is a musculoskeletal disorder, affecting humans from adolescent to adult age. It is a health and socio-economic problem worldwide. The cause and contributing factors to LBP are multifactorial resulting in different approaches for its management. The attitudes and beliefs of patient with LBP, play an important role in the whole process of pain management. Negative attitudes and beliefs may lead to fear -avoidance behaviour, resulting into pain chronicity and disability. Thus, this study aimed to identify the attitudes and beliefs among patients with LBP, attending physiotherapy treatment in Malawi. Queen Elizabeth and Kamuzu Central hospitals were selected as study settings. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was done, using a self-administered questionnaire, employing a convenience sampling method. Twelve statements about attitudes and beliefs on LBP were adopted from the Back Beliefs Questionnaire (BBQ) and from the Survey of Pain Attitudes (SOPA). The SPSS (version 19.0) was used for data capturing and analysis. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to summarize data. The Chi-square test was used to determine any association between variables and the Alpha level of significance was set at 0.05. All ethical issues were sought and adhered to throughout the study period. The results showed that out of 205 participants, with mean age of 47.74 years, (SD=13.29), female constituted 53.2% of the sample. More than half (67%) of all participants portrayed negative attitudes and beliefs about their LBP. We concluded that, majority of patients with LBP in Malawi hold negative attitudes and beliefs about their pain. Therefore, patient health education is needed to change these attitudes and beliefs if recovery and treatment goal are to be achieved.