Implementation of self management strategies in patients with musculoskeletal pain: Book of good practices for healthcare professionals

Musculoskeletal (MSK) pain represents one of the most prevalent and disabling health conditions worldwide. It often persists beyond the resolution of any tissue injury, becoming a complex and multifaceted experience shaped by biological, psychological, and social factors. For healthcare professionals working with these patients, clinical expertise alone is not enough — the real challenge lies in helping people understand their pain, make sense of it, and take an active, confident role in managing it. This book aims to serve as a quick reference guide for healthcare professionals and musculoskeletal specialists seeking practical tools and synthetic theoretical grounding on key topics related to the implementation of self-management strategies in musculoskeletal pain care. The language throughout this book is deliberately clear, respectful, and person-centred. Patients are viewed as active partners, not passive recipients. The clinician’s role is to guide, support, and coach—helping people build skills, confidence, and resilience in managing their condition. Specifically, the guide provides concise, clinically relevant frameworks on: The general principles of self-management in musculoskeletal pain, emphasizing how to enable patients to adopt and sustain behaviours that improve function and quality of life. How to assess and enhance patient motivation for self-management and behaviour change, using models from health psychology and pain science. How to identify and address low musculoskeletal health and pain literacy, ensuring that information is not only provided but actually understood, appraised, and applied in the patient’s daily life. To complement these conceptual sections, the book also includes 26 clinical vignettes that illustrate common challenges encountered in musculoskeletal practice. These short, realistic cases show how to handle barriers such as fear of movement, avoidance behaviours, unrealistic expectations, misunderstandings about imaging results, difficulties in work participation, or struggles with goal setting and adherence. Each vignette integrates communication techniques (e.g., motivational interviewing, teach-back, empathy-based dialogue) and clinical reasoning to demonstrate how theory translates into practice.