Purpose: To explore and describe what physiotherapists experience they need to know about patients with non-specific low back pain (NSLBP) to make decisions about intervention.

Method: Four focus groups containing a total of 21 physiotherapists were carried out in Sweden. Interviews were transcribed and qualitative content analysis performed. The manifest content was coded and categorised, and a theme emerged. Extracted symptoms and signs were linked to ICF codes.

Result: Physiotherapists’ clinical reasoning represented a broad view on low back pain (LBP) including codes from all ICF components. The participants argued for individualisation of intervention to a specific patient’s problems. A theme of case complexity emerged, involving three levels: easy case, characterised by impairment in body function with close relation to specific body structures; complex case, characterised by impairments in body function, particular mental functions, activity limitations and participation restrictions, particular management of activity level and very complex case, characterised by impairments in body function, activity limitations and participation restrictions, and contextual factors, with help-seeking behaviour as a particular feature.

Conclusion: The physiotherapists’ clinical reasoning reflected a broad view on patients with NSLBP, with variations related to case complexity. The use of ICF codes contributed to understanding that the physiotherapists applied a broad perspective on NSLBP as a health condition as well as to knowledge about how physiotherapists’ understand patients with NSLBP.

Physiotherapists’ use of the ICF in clinical practice might facilitate identification and assessment of specific patient’s back pain problem as they occur in daily life and therefore be helpful in rehabilitation planning. Findings might also have an educational value.

Purpose: To investigate how physiotherapists talk about the choice of intervention for patients with NSLBP, particularly how professionals manage clinical encounters that may be experienced as challenging.

Method: Discourse analysis was performed of four focus groups’ talk. Twenty-one experienced physiotherapists working in primary health care in southern Sweden participated.

Results: Four focal themes appeared: Responsibility for health and health-related problems; Normalization – what counts as a normal back pain problem in relation to living an ordinary life; Change process – how to lead one’s life; and Individualization of the intervention in relation to the individual patient but also from the physiotherapists’ point of view. The themes shape an over-arching pattern of Problem-solving – which concerned both the professional task and the back pain problem, and was related to varying case complexity. This may have implications for the intervention the individual patient will be offered and on outcome.

Conclusions: Physiotherapists’ attitudes and approaches seem to entail components of professional and personal values which may influence patients’ access to health care, with a risk for unequal assessment and intervention as a consequence. We argue that enhanced physiotherapist-patient collaboration, including patient-led problem-investigation, is a prerequisite for improved outcome in terms of patient satisfaction, and for physiotherapy development. Future investigations of patients’ roles in specific face-to-face encounters are needed.