Saskia Baltrusch

25 Chapter 2 2.1 Participants and Recruitment Six patients with chronic low-back pain, defined as daily or almost daily pain for at least three months undergoing vocational rehabilitation were recruited at rehabilitation center Heliomare in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. Excluded were patients with specific radiographic abnormalities or a history of spinal surgery. In order to represent a larger population of low back pain patients, we included patients that showed different levels of disability and large differences in low back pain influencing their daily life. Two participants could not attend the session due to personal reasons, so we conducted the focus group with 4 patients. The second focus group consisted of 8 healthcare professionals with working experience with low-back pain patients for at least 2 years in a wide range of occupations within the healthcare system. All potential participants received an invitation letter to participate in the study. If interested, they could contact the main investigator (SB) to obtain more information and sign up for participation. This research complied with the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the medical ethical committee of VU medical center (VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, NL57404.029.16). Informed consent was obtained from each participant. 2.2 Procedure and Data Collection Participants provided written informed consent and completed a short questionnaire to obtain information about demographic details. Patients were asked for their history of low-back pain and healthcare professionals were asked for their occupation. The focus group discussions were conducted by a moderator (JK) and an observer (main investigator SB) using a discussion guide (Table 1). During the focus group, participants could try out an existing exoskeleton (for device description see Appendix) and were provided with a short explanation of the same device. Providing participants with visual material information facilitates inspiration [27] and helps to give them a clear picture of the current state of the science. Therefore, the try-out was meant to give the participants an idea and a feeling of how an exoskeleton could look and work like. 2