Constructing and living with chronic back pain identities - with Dr Noor Abdal

The Words Matter Podcast with Oliver Thomson

On this episode I spoke with Dr Noor Abdal, a physiotherapist who has a special interest in persistent pain.

Noor and I both completed our PhD's around the same time at the University of Brighton, and were part of the same 'methodological group' employing constructivist grounded theory (GT) to try and figure things out. We resisted the temptation to launch into a discussion about GT and qualitative research (but a podcast is coming focusing on this topic...), but if you'd like to read more about GT see my paper here on what GT is all about.

In this podcast we spoke about Noor’s clinical work as a Biopsychosocially orientated physiotherapist in Kuwait and how she’s integrating psychologically-informed practice in her management of patients with chronic back pain (CLBP).

We also talked about her PhD research which explored illness identities amongst Kuwaiti women experiencing chronic low back pain (CLBP). She developed a grounded theory to describe and explain the impact of cultural, social and emotional experiences on women’s manifestations of CLBP and their behaviours towards it. We also chatted about how MSK clinicians can relate this theory to their clinical practice.

This was almost a catch-up with an old friend in addition to the podcast.

Find Dr Noor Abdal on Twitter on Instagram

Subscribe to www.wordsmatter-education.com , and check out the online course in effective language and communication when managing back pain.

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