Ways to stop good clinicians leaving pain management (i)

After the heartbreaking post last week that seemed to resonate with so many around the world, I thought I’d look at what we can do to stop good clinicians leaving pain management. While our jurisdictions have differences in pay rates, reimbursement approaches and treatment codes, at the heart of good healthcare is good people who want to help. So why, when healthcare is populated with caring clinicians, do we strike bullying, lack of support for one another, non-existent teamwork, and poor career pathways? What is going on? I’ll tackle these in bite-sized chunks, starting with the funders. And of course, I want to point out some of the contributing factors. Funders Funders (insurers, agencies paying for treatment) have at their heart, a fear of being taken for a ride. People with pain can be viewed with suspicion because their problems cannot be imaged. Why else spend such inordinate amounts of money on investigating whether someone ‘meets criteria’ for treatment? Historically in New Zealand, we have one national accident insurer – a no-fault, 24/7 insurance for any accidental injury sustained in work, out of work, in school, while on the roads, wherever. At times this insurer has been fairly generous – certainly when I started working in this area in the 1980s there were plenty of people with chronic pain that I saw having had 300 or more physiotherapy sessions. “Passive” therapy (hot packs and ultrasound) was c...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Interdisciplinary teams Professional topics Science in practice Clinical reasoning Health healthcare Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs