Musculoskeletal Decision Support Tools

Decision support tools are a set of questions and answers to help people living with a health condition make informed choices about their treatments. They are used together with a healthcare professional to support a conversation, taking into account the context of people’s lives, and not assuming that there is a single ‘best’ option for everyone.

Versus Arthritis has produced a suite of support tools to help people with back, shoulder, hip and knee pain. They were developed by Versus Arthritis with support from the Primary Care Centre Versus Arthritis at Keele University.

What tools are available?

There are eight tools, all available to download as PDFs:

• Making decisions about my back pain: primary care and self-care (PDF, 287 KB)
• Making decisions about my back pain: thinking about a referral (PDF, 281 KB)
• Making decisions about my shoulder pain: primary care and self-care (PDF, 286 KB)
• Making decisions about my shoulder pain: thinking about a referral (PDF, 302 KB)
• Making decisions about my hip pain: primary care and self-care (PDF, 284 KB)
• Making decisions about my hip pain: thinking about a referral (PDF, 281 KB)
• Making decisions about my knee pain: primary care and self-care (PDF, 291 KB)
• Making decisions about my knee pain: thinking about a referral (PDF, 290 KB)

How to use the tools

The tools are designed to support consultations between people and their healthcare professionals. They encourage people to think about what types of support they need to help them with their musculoskeletal health problem.

People can use these to prepare for appointments, during appointments, or both.

Each tool sets out the treatment options for that condition and summarises what is known about the potential benefits and risks of each option. They are intended to facilitate discussion, not to guide people towards a particular option.

How the tools were developed

The tools were co-designed by an Expert Advisory Group, chaired by Versus Arthritis, which included people with arthritis, general practitioners, physiotherapists, policymakers, academics and decision support experts.

A team at Keele University summarised the current evidence and national guidance for each topic area. The series of evidence summaries they produced to underpin each of the decision support tools are available to review:

• Back problems evidence summary (2020) (PDF, 297 KB)
• Shoulder problems evidence summary (2020) (PDF, 725 KB)
• Hip problems evidence summary (2020) (PDF, 644 KB)
• Knee problems evidence summary (2020) (PDF, 648 KB)
• Overall prognosis evidence summary (2020) (PDF, 445 KB)

The draft tools were reviewed by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), the Chartered Society for Physiotherapy (CSP), and the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA), and were tested in clinical practice at the Pennine MSK Clinic in Oldham. All the feedback was considered by the Expert Advisory Group in preparing the final versions.

Additional decision support tools

Additional decision support tools about hip osteoarthritis and knee osteoarthritis are available on the NHS England website. These tools were co-produced by Versus Arthritis and NHS England.