Supporting exercise before joint replacement
Theme Surgical and orthopaedic innovation
Workstream Interventions to improve patient outcomes after surgery
Status: This project is ongoing
People waiting for a joint replacement often avoid physical activity as they believe it will damage their painful joints. However, we know that exercising before total hip or knee replacement is good for patients and can improve their outcomes after surgery. Having good exercise habits before surgery means patients are also more likely to exercise as part of their rehabilitation after surgery.
Pain Science Education, or PSE, offers a new way of supporting patients waiting for a joint replacement to increase their physical activity levels. It helps people reevaluate what chronic pain means and challenge beliefs around pain, movement, and joint damage. This helps people address their pain and reduces their fear of both pain and movement.
Combining this new approach to pain with health psychology and behaviour change theory will help us design an exercise programme that supports patients to increase their physical activity levels before surgery.
Project aims
The aim of this study is to develop an intervention to improve physical activity levels in patients waiting for joint replacement surgery using Pain Science Education and accessible exercise. Our work will include developing and designing the content and messaging for this intervention.
We plan on making our intervention accessible and acceptable to underserved groups. To do this, we will consider barriers to engagement, such as language, literacy levels, and delivery mode.
Our work so far
We reviewed studies of Pain Science Education (PSE) for people with knee or hip osteoarthritis. We found that PSE can help with some of the psychological impacts of pain, including:
- Preventing people expecting the worst from their pain
- Reducing fear of movement
- Improving people’s self-belief in their ability to be active
PSE was most effective when it was delivered alongside a programme of tailored exercises. Patients found PSE easier to follow when scientific topics were explained using examples relevant to their own experiences.
