Objectives: There is no current consensus on the key items sports physiotherapists should consider when completing a comprehensive biopsychosocial upper or lower limb pain assessment with athletes. We sought to develop recommendations to inform a framework for the assessment of upper and lower limb pain in athletes. Design; Real-time Delphi Methods: We recruited sports physiotherapists currently working with athletes through the International Society of Sports Physical Therapists and Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists. Participants voted on 86 pain assessment items chosen using best available evidence. The real-time Delphi method facilitated independent anonymous voting, commenting and immediate review of consensus. Participants indicated level of agreement for inclusion in an upper and lower limb athlete pain assessment framework on a 6-point Likert scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree, and how often they are/will be required in practice on a 5-point scale from Never to Always. Criteria for consensus agreement and inclusion were i) >70% sports physiotherapists voting agree/strongly agree AND ii) median vote selected by physiotherapists was Agree or Strongly Agree. Results: 41 sports physiotherapists (female n=20, male n=21), visited the survey an average of 5.3 times, resulting in a completion rate of 98%. 64 assessment items (neurophysiological n=20, biomechanical n=15, affective n=8, cognitive n=3, socioenvironmental n=10, general assessment aspects of assessment n=8) met the criteria for consensus. Frequency of use in practice was Always for 28 items Often for 32 items and Sometimes for 4 items. Conclusion: We have presented stakeholder-generated recommendations and priorities for athlete pain assessment.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This work was supported by funding from Science Foundation Ireland under the grant for the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics (SFI/12/RC/2289_P2) Funders had no role in the data collection, analysis or interpretation and will have no role in approving the final manuscript.

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Data are available through the Open Science Framework (OSF) which is a public open access repository and can be accessed at 10.17605/OSF.IO/D8T3N

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