Study protocol for Norwegian Psychomotor Physiotherapy versus Cognitive Patient Education in combination with active individualized physiotherapy in patients with long-lasting musculoskeletal pain – a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Norwegian Psychomotor Physiotherapy (NPMP) has been an established treatment approach for more than 50 years, although mostly in the Scandinavian countries, and is usually applied to patients with widespread and long-lasting musculoskeletal pain and/or psychosomatic disorders. Few studies have been investigating outcome of NPMP and no randomized clinical trials (RCT) have been systematically tried out on individuals. METHODS/DESIGN: This is a study protocol for a pragmatic, single blinded RCT, which will take place in a city of Norway. The participants will be block randomized either to receive NPMP or Cognitive Patient Education in combination with active individualized physiotherapy (COPE-PT). The intervention will reflect usual care and will be conducted in physiotherapy clinics by five experienced physiotherapists in each of the two treatment approaches. DISCUSSION: The findings of the present study may give an important contribution to our knowledge of the outcome of NPMP, on patients with long-lasting widespread musculoskeletal pain and/or pain located to the neck and shoulder region. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study has been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (June 9 th 2015, NCT02482792). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12891-016-1159-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.