Changing the way people think about, talk about and treat persistent pain

The British Pain Society’s "Pain News” has been taken over by the Flippin’ Pain™ team in it's last issue.

The British Pain Society is one of the oldest and largest pain organisations in the UK, they work with healthcare professionals, pain specialists and those living with long-term, chronic pain to reduce the suffering of people enduring long-term and short-term pain. It will be no surprise to readers of Pain News that chronic pain is suffered by over a third of the population and has devastating, life altering affects for those burdened with it.

Community Pain Champion for Flippin’ Pain, Cormac Ryan, Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation at Teesside University, takes to the magazine to address how pain is not just a marker of tissue damage but actually is a complex subconscious phenomenon. Cormac then goes on to discuss the shift away from biomedical and how important it is that this should be implemented across the healthcare sector.

He asks the important question:

”Why is there not more of a shift towards biopsychosocial practice in keeping with evidence-based guidelines?”

Niki Jones, gave a emotional account of the debilitating pain she experienced for 16 years and how she made the shift from the many drugs she had been prescribed to effective self-management techniques.

She tells of the hopelessness she felt when she was told that there was no further medical treatment available and how self-managing pain changed her life:

”Prior to understanding pain, I’d endured 16 years of ‘intractable’ pain. I’d had multiple surgeries and a motor cortex stimulator (that helped a small amount) and then had been left, largely unattended, on high doses of opioids. When you are told there is nothing left to do, you don’t look any more.”

After living with the pain for 16 years and developing an understanding of the pain, Niki found:

”I had control over so much that was influencing my pain experience and my suffering was transformative. I won’t say it’s simple – and it certainly hasn’t been easy – but it’s worth it.”

In the last article from Flippin’ Pain, our Head of NHS Service Development, Richard Pell dives into an overview of the what, when, where why and how of the public health campaign. Richard gives a professional and in depth view of people living with pain, assisting them in how to broach the subject of pain and how they can make sure their condition is understood by others.

Richard explains:

”Flippin’ Pain™ is a UK-based public health campaign changing the way people think about, talk about and treat persistent pain. The campaign is engaging communities – people affected by persistent pain and health professionals – and communicating modern pain science in ways that are universally accessible and relevant, bringing an understanding of pain to those who need it most.

Without understanding pain, much of the best advice about how to manage it makes no sense at all. Facilitating an understanding of pain that aligns with that of contemporary pain science will empower those afflicted by it and increase the likelihood that they will make lifestyle and healthcare choices that are consistent with management strategies supported by the best available evidence..”