Back Pain: With Peter O’Sullivan

For any clinician who works with people with low back pain.

Back pain is the leading cause of disability. There is compelling evidence that people’s experience of back pain is influenced by a complex of bio-psycho-social factors. There are many unhelpful beliefs about back pain that lead people in pain to become fearful, distressed, protective and avoidant. It is critical that clinicians understand the factors that underpin a person’s back pain, and developing skills to identify and target them allows for effective management.

For people with persistent disabling back pain, clinicians should exclude serious pathology, identify the physical and psychological barriers to recovery, and direct treatment to those barriers.

Cognitive Functional Therapy was developed as a person-centred behavioural approach to individualize the management of disabling low back pain. This approach has evolved from an integration of foundational behavioural psychology and neuroscience within physical therapy practice. It is underpinned by a multidimensional clinical reasoning framework to identify the modifiable and nonmodifiable factors associated with an individual’s pain. It incorporates a person-centred approach to identify and target unhelpful cognitions, emotions, movement and lifestyle behaviours that drive pain and disability. The aim is to coach people with disabling back pain to effectively self-manage their condition. There is growing evidence for the efficacy of Cognitive Functional Therapy for long-term, large reductions in pain and disability in people with disabling low back pain.

During this two-day workshop, Peter will take you on a journey with real patients sharing their own path to recovery.

Registration and More Information

Back Pain: With Peter O’Sullivan
Vancouver, Canada – April 25, 2025 – April 26, 2025