Watchful Waiting as a Strategy for Reducing Low-value Spinal Imaging

The investigators will learn from the study whether actors playing the roles of patients (standardized patients) can help primary care and urgent care clinicians develop skill in offering watchful waiting to patients with acute low back pain as a means of averting low-value spinal imaging. Using patient and physician feedback, this study will refine and evaluate -- in a controlled experiment -- a simulated standardized patient intervention to enhance primary care physician use of watchful waiting when patients request low-value spinal imaging. The long-term goal of this study is to discover communication strategies primary care physicians can use to avert costly, potentially harmful testing while maintaining the patient-doctor relationship.