Have you ever heard of the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia? Has anyone on your pain recovery healthcare team asked you to evaluate these statements at an office visit?
- I’m afraid that I might injure myself if I exercise
- My body is telling me that I have something dangerously wrong
- My accident has put my body at risk for the rest of my life
- I am afraid that I might injure myself accidently
- No one should have to exercise when he/she is in pain
Chances are that the health care professional who presented these statements to you were utilizing a 17 question scale known as the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia which was developed to measure an individual patient’s fear of movement related to chronic lower back pain.
Kinesiophobia is a term that was introduced by the developers of the scale in 1990 at the Ninth Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society. Kinesiophobia describes a situation where “a patient has an excessive, irrational, and debilitating fear of physical movement and activity resulting from a feeling of vulnerability to painful injury or reinjury.” Initially used to measure fear of movement related to chronic low back pain, the TSK has been used increasingly for pain related to different body parts including the cervical spine. The TSK is a self-completed questionnaire and the range of scores are from 17 to 68 where the higher scores indicate an increasing degree of kinesiophobia.(source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3154068/) If you have not seen or used this particular scale and you would like to see the questions here is a link to the 17 questions on the test. http://www.tac.vic.gov.au/files-to-move/media/upload/tampa_scale_kinesiophobia.pdf
