What did I do? Aim/s of your PhD

The aim of my PhD thesis was to propose a stakeholder-informed upper and lower limb athlete pain assessment framework to enhance the clinician/researcher and athlete interaction. In a nutshell, I wanted to help athletes and clinicians to better understand and comprehensively assess pain, addressing both a gap in the published literature and a challenge in clinical practice (figure 1).

Why did I do it? Rationale for your PhD

Athlete pain is both under-reported and undervalued. Athletes experience pain through a multidimensional, biopsychosocial lens that is influenced by a range of contextual factors (wider biological, psychological, cognitive and socioenvironmental).1 2 Upper and lower limb pain has a high prevalence in sport, significantly impacting athletes’ performance within sport and their quality of life outside of it. Published literature regarding athlete pain is sparse, due in part to the dominance…