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Table 3 Statements by primary health care providers on beliefs about the origin and meaning of chronic low back pain

From: Misbeliefs about non-specific low back pain and attitudes towards treatment by primary care providers in Spain: a qualitative study

Subthemes

Quotations

Structural alterations in the lumbar spine as a cause of chronic low back pain

“Usually, a process that goes from effort to the degenerative process proper to age [...] An effort plus a degenerative pathology. You do not have these pains when you are young” (BM 3)

“There is a physiological component that would be a lumbar hernia and a psychosomatic component” (BM 2).

“I think it ends up becoming chronic because the cause that starts it is not resolved at the bottom and it is not something organic, but there are probably external things [...] Anxiety, stress, depression basically, problems, grief, loss of a loved one” (BM 4).

The influence of providers’ own low back pain experiences on their beliefs

“I think there is a genetic origin since my father already had a couple of hernias [...] My sister also has one” (RN 5).

“I haven’t even had an MRI, so I don’t know if I have a disk disease. But I don’t want to have one, precisely for that reason, because I think that if I see a herniated disk, I will still think that it is the herniated disk. So, I prefer not to know what I have. I do not look at it so as not to change my attitude [...] I find myself more limited. I feel more insecure” (BM 4).