Exploring patients’ expectations of seeking integrative medical treatment for musculoskeletal disorder: a qualitative study

Purpose: To explore musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) patients’ expectations of receiving treatment at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. Methods: Semi-structured face to face interviews were conducted with 30 newly referred musculoskeletal disorders patients, immediately prior to their initial appointment. The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim and analysed using framework analysis (NVivo10). To ensure transparency and rigour, inter-rater reliability coding was carried out independently by three researchers. Results: Five codes with fourteen themes emerged related to the MSD patients’ expectations of receiving complementary/ integrative treatment. MSD patients reported their concerns regarding their forthcoming treatment. Although MSD patients reported that their expectations were pragmatic and realistic, their expectations may tend to change over time. They had great hope from the treatment, which included symptom relief/functional ability/better quality of life, getting the right and suitable treatment, natural and non-invasive treatment, receiving an integrative and holistic approach, potentially longterm and regular treatment, and complementary treatment as an ‘in between’ conventional treatment. Despite this, they also had great hopes about the practitioners – they wished to have skillful professional expertise, more interaction with practitioners, updates from practitioners, provision of understanding and mental support from practitioners. Patients also reported what kind of treatment they wished to have and identified their preferred sessions. Conclusion: Patients’ expectation is an important but changeable component that is based on previous treatment experiences. Their hopes regarding further develop on complementary/integrative treatment should be considered. Demonstrating patient expectations may help to improve future clinical practice andpolicy, to bettermeetMSDpatients’ expectation. Contact:Xiao-YangHu, hux2@lsbu.ac.uk / Nicola Robinson, nicky.robinson@lsbu.ac.uk