PAIN MANAGEMENT Lisa Turner is a specialist OT working in a community pain management service. She explains her role within the multi-disciplinary team and the interventions used to help patients manage their chronic pain
Chronic or persistent pain has been estimated to affect around 43% of the UK population
I
am an occupational therapist, working within a community pain management service for the NHS in Staffordshire. I have worked in this interesting and challenging role for over ten years. Not all pain management services have occupational therapists and I personally feel that we add an enormous amount of value to this area of practice. Chronic or persistent pain has been estimated to affect around 43% of the UK population. Along with the impact this has on the individual, it also places a huge burden on health services and more widely on society. Persistent pain is complex - affecting the physical, social, vocational, cognitive, and psychological elements of a person’s life. In my role I focus on the impact of pain on a patient’s ability to function, activities that are meaningful to them and their quality of life. Activity performance is central to an individual’s identity and restrictions on these can have a huge impact on an individual’s psychological health and wellbeing. Due to the multi-factorial nature of chronic pain, I work in a multidisciplinary team with physiotherapists, psychologists and a pharmacist. We all look at pain from different perspectives and use the biopsychosocial model of practice to assess and treat the impact that pain has on an individual. The aim of pain management is not to get rid of the pain but to improve a person’s ability to live well with it, moving towards more acceptance of their condition. Our team goal is to empower patients to take control of their own pain, to take responsibility for their own health and build confidence to self manage. I carry out joint assessments with my physiotherapy colleagues. Each patient is encouraged to share their pain narrative, which is often therapeutic in itself. We use a collaborative approach to negotiate a treatment plan. Our group work focuses on interactive pain education and teaching patients a range of self-management strategies. Group work is particularly important in pain management as sharing experiences normalises
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