Activity and Life-role Targeted Pain Rehabilitation in Primary Health Care

• Number of days of sickness absence from work [ Time Frame: 6 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Number of days of sickness absence from work during a 3-month period preceding the baseline measurement and preceding each follow-up, and specified in percent of full-time work.
  
  
• Number of days of sickness absence from work [ Time Frame: 1 year ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Number of days of sickness absence from work during a 3-month period preceding the baseline measurement and preceding each follow-up, and specified in percent of full-time work.
  
  
• Number of days of sickness absence from work [ Time Frame: 2 years ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Number of days of sickness absence from work during a 3-month period preceding the baseline measurement and preceding each follow-up, and specified in percent of full-time work.
  
  
• Number of days of sickness absence from work [ Time Frame: 5 years ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Number of days of sickness absence from work during a 3-month period preceding the baseline measurement and preceding each follow-up, and specified in percent of full-time work.
  
  

• Return-to-work after sickness absence [ Time Frame: Before treatment (at baseline), with follow-ups at 6 months, 1 , 2 and 5 years after treatment (after baseline assessment) ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Number of participants that return to work after sickness absence, i.e. that were on sick leave before the study and that has returned to work after the study.
  
  
• Disability [ Time Frame: Before treatment (at baseline), with follow-ups at 6 months, 1 , 2 and 5 years after treatment (after baseline assessment) ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Pain-related disability according to Pain Disability Index (PDI).
  
  

The primary goal of the Swedish national rehabilitation plan on pain is to reduce disability and facilitate return-to-work. However, there is a lack of treatment strategies that effectively target and affect return-to-work and reduce sickness absence, and that in addition are sufficiently easy and feasible to administer in primary care. A new activity and life-role targeting rehabilitation program (ALAR) has been developed to reduce psychosocial barriers to rehabilitation progress, promote re-integration into life-role activities and facilitate return-to-work. The program will be implemented and provided as one of the pain treatment modalities available through multi-professional teams in primary care in one Swedish county. This study aims to evaluate the effect of an activity and life-role targeting pain rehabilitation program on the outcome variables return-to-work and sickness absence.

Patients seeking care due to disabling back, neck or shoulder pain at seven primary health care units in the County of Dalarna, Sweden, will be randomly allocated to ALAR or usual multimodal rehabilitation. Between and within-group differences on return-to-work, sickness absence and disability will be evaluated at 10 weeks, six months, one, two and five years post-treatment.

The treatment manual has been developed and education of the staff delivering the experimental treatment has started.

The results of this pragmatic study will be directly applicable in the management of pain in primary care and will thus contribute to improved rehabilitation for persons with disabling pain.