The research question is to Generate a protocol study to determine the incidence of obesity and low back pain in the UAE. Treatment patterns, limitations in treatment and care as well as the satisfaction of service amongst patients.

Obesity and low back pain

T‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‌‌‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‍‍‍he research question is to Generate a protocol study to determine the incidence of obesity and lower back pain in the UAE. Treatment patterns, limitations in treatment and care as well as the satisfaction of service amongst patients. below is the instruction (notes) from my professor for selected topics: the key word here is satisfaction with care service, so in other words if we break it down into epidemiological terms this would be: exposed group/study group: patients with back pain who are obese outcome measure: satisfaction Now, choose a title based on this information (for example this could be assessing level of satisfaction and outcomes of obese low back pain patients with pain management services).

Obesity and low back pain

Your next plans is following the proposal template provided is to think about: 1. what your objectives will be . So if your bigger aim is to examine satisfaction rate with pain management services provided to obese patients with low back pain then your 3 objectives could be to a) first examine how many people have low back pain (and obese) and access pain management services in regions in the UAE (choose and specify the regions) b) measure their satisfaction (this is a general term and you need to break it down to whether you want to look at satisfaction in terms of quality of life, or function/disability outcomes or pain outcome or psychological well-being? choose specific satisfaction measures).

Obesity and low back pain

2. Because this is ultimately based on satisfaction which is dependent on patients’ opinions your only option is to make it a survey cross-sectional study. However, think about your study design in details e.g. what type of survey this will be, when you will survey (over a year, months, weeks?), where you will survey, how to validate the survey etc. 3. Next think about the setting: are you conducting this study in primary of secondary care (e.g. primary healthcare clinic or hospita‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‌‌‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‍‍‍l? This will entirely be depended on where the service is provided, thus gather this information from the literature such as google scholar or pubmed). https://youtu.be/brBAOhndxI0

Obesity and low back pain

4. Next think about your study subject: so we know you will gather data from patient with low-back pain and obese, but think about how you will define the measures of back pain (how is this diagnosed or confirmed) and obesity (how will you confirm this) and if there are specific inclusion/exclusion criteria you would like to impose e.g. are you targeting young adult or older patients, UAE nationals or also international citizens, those with medical history or exclude some with some medical history? etc. etc. etc.

Here you want to be able to examine similar studies in the literature and gather some idea of reasons behind some selected criteria, then make your judgement as to which criteria you will create and why.

Obesity and low back pain

5. Next think about sample size and sampling technique adopted and be able to justify the reason why you have chosen this particular technique. 6. Next think and finally think about once you collect the data where will you safely store it for analysis, are there any particular ethical approval to seek, what analysis techniques will you use to meet your specific objectives and what data software will you use? If you are able to follow the template provided in the project folder, use and critically think about the above as well as gain 2-3 past literature on the topic of back pain and pain management service opinions.

Obesity and low back pain

Read the literature for inspiration, resource use and to gain accurate information but try not to use similar objectives, try to create ones instead. However, inevitably there are things that is unavoidably going to be similar such as the standards of pain scale or disability scale or quality of life scale etc etc‌‍‍‍‍‌‌‌‌‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‍‍‍‍.

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