Table 1.

Clinical application of contextual factors. The table presents examples of use of contextual factors aimed to enhance placebo effects and avoid nocebo effects. Adapted from [16, 17, 19]

Contextual factors	Actions to enhance (placebo effects)	Actions to avoid (nocebo effects)
(A) Physiotherapist’s features	• improve physiotherapist’s professionalism; • be aware of physiotherapist’s mindset; • promote physiotherapist’s appearance;	• overlook physiotherapist’s professionalism; • be unaware of physiotherapist’s mindset; • disregard physiotherapist’s appearance;
(B) Patient’s features	• examine patients’ mindset; • analyse patients’ baseline;	• neglect patients’ mindset; • ignore patients’ baseline;
(C) Patient-physiotherapist relationship	• manage verbal communication; • optimise non-verbal communication;	• neglect verbal communication; • ignore non-verbal communication;
(D) Treatment features	• amplify the rituality of treatments; • be aware of therapeutic touch; • consider the modality/posology of treatment; • use marketing of treatment;	• limit the rituality of treatments; • be unaware of therapeutic touch; • omit the modality/posology of treatment; • neglect marketing of treatment;
(E) Healthcare setting features	• adopt positive distractors and supportive indications; • use comfort elements, decorations and ornaments;	• avoid positive distractors and supportive indications; • omit comfort elements, decorations and ornaments;