6627 Delivery of the PIC-C training programme to paediatric professionals working with children and young people with persistent pain

Objectives Persistent pain is an increasingly recognised problem in children and young people (CYP), with the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain ranging from 4–40%.¹ Persistent pain is recognised to have physiological, psychological, and social components and increasingly research and guidelines are recommending that clinicians adopt a psychologically informed approach.² Despite this many clinicians lack skills and confidence and training to deliver psychologically informed care and often struggle to support CYP living with complex and chronic conditions where distress is commonplace in clinical encounters.³ Psychologically Informed Collaborative Conversations (PIC-C) is a co-produced training and supervision package and has been shown to be effective in improving the skills and confidence of physiotherapists managing adults with pain.⁴ The aim of this work was to explore whether the PIC-C programme could be delivered successfully to a group of physiotherapists working with CYP with persistent pain. Methods The PIC-C education package was delivered between May 2023 and October 2023 to 19 paediatric physiotherapists. The course consisted of 8 taught sessions of 1.5 hours, with 8 further weeks of supervision (hour long) following the original PIC-C programme protocol. Sessions were delivered online on week-day evenings, facilitated by two PIC-C trainers and two paediatric physiotherapists experienced in chronic pain. Evaluation followed the same format as used in PIC-C with this population including rating their confidence in delivering psychologically informed care pre and post programme as well as how often they used specific management techniques within their practice. Results 20 physiotherapists signed up to the course, 18 of whom were paediatric practitioners. One physiotherapist was unable to complete the course due to unknown reasons. 79% of participants (n=15) completed the pre-course measures and 42% (n=8) completed the post-course measures. Figure 1 shows the mean reported decrease in anxiety following participation in the PIC-C course. Qualitative data around participants experiences and impact on their professional skills were also collected, with themes including addition of paediatric case studies to the teaching. Conclusion The PIC-C training package is suitable for delivery to paediatric professionals and has a positive impact on physiotherapists professionals' confidence in using psychologically informed practice with a paediatric pain patient group. Further analysis of qualitative data will suggest improvements to delivery in this professional group. Future work is planned to look at further adapting this course for a wider paediatric audience. References King S, Chambers CT, Huguet, MacNevin RC, McGrath PJ, Parker L, MacDonald AJ. 2011. The epidemiology of chronic pain in children and adolescents revisited: a systematic review. Pain152(12), pp.2729–2738 World Health Organization, 2020. Guidelines on the management of chronic pain in children. Accessed at https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240017870 Hurley-Wallace A, Wood C, Franck LS, Howard RF, Liossi C. 2019. Paediatric pain education for health care professionals. Pain reports4(1) Health Innovation Network, 2021. Psychologically informed collaborative conversations: Final report. Accessed at https://healthinnovationnetwork.com/report/psychologically-informed-collaborative-conversations-pic-c/