Helping people manage their musculoskeletal pain by focusing on their strengths and protective factors is the aim of new research supported by The Hospital Research Foundation Group through the Nicholas Way Fund.
Dr Martin Rabey, a Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist at Royal Perth Hospital, has received the funding to improve how musculoskeletal pain – pain involving muscles, joints and bones – is understood and treated.
Rather than focusing on what goes wrong in the body, Dr. Rabey’s research will explore the strengths and protective factors that help people cope with pain, stay active, or recover more effectively.
The work will run over three years and shape a new, strengths-based approach to pain care. It is predominantly funded by the Western Australian Future Health Research and Innovation Fund and Dr Rabey’s Raine Medical Research Foundation Clinical Research Fellowship with funds received via the Nicholas Way Fund providing vital top-up funds.
Dr Rabey’s research will be conducted over three phases with the first phase now completed.
The second phase, now underway, will involve analysis of data from four large international cohorts and the third, the Delphi study, will focus on the co-design of multidimensional strengths-based pain care.
Dr Rabey said most research was about trying to find out what’s ‘wrong’ and to ‘fix’ it with treatment outcomes for pain generally poor.
“We want to harness people’s personal strengths so that it facilitates their recovery.
“Strengths-based approaches to pain are uncommon, so we’re starting from the ground up – looking at which strengths might be most important so we can explicitly assess and target them during treatment.”
About the Nicholas Way Fund
The Nicholas Way Fund was set up in 2021 to support Early Career Researchers with additional top-up funds to ensure the success of their research projects.
Nick was an award winning Western Australian journalist who spent years reporting for some of the country’s leading news networks across Asia, Australia and South Africa before establishing his own media business in 2012.
Nick died in 2022, just shy of a two-year battle with bulbar onset motor neuron disease, but never lost the drive and tenacity that were hallmarks of his career even as his health declined.
The Nicholas Way Fund was established by Professor Sue Fletcher to honour Nick and to encourage young researchers to overcome any hurdles or adversity in achieving their own goals.
