Do clinicians know how to help people develop pain self management?

In recent posts I’ve been discussing pain self management and why it’s not only necessary, but inevitable for people living with pain. Today I turn my gaze to health professionals, and the skills needed to support developing self management – because it’s not the same as ‘telling’, or ‘educating’, or even ‘advising’. Firstly, let’s check out what people with pain want in self management. Lim and colleagues (2019) conducted a systematic review examining studies identifying ‘health information needs’ of people with low back pain. I put that title in quotes because my initial response is “Is health information what people want?” or is this about what clinicians think people want? Anyhow from 41 studies (mostly qualitative) they found that people had a “…desire for a diagnosis, potentially contributing to expectations for and overuse of imaging. People with low back pain expressed a strong desire for clear, consistent and personalised information on prognosis, treatment options and self-management strategies, related to healthcare and occupational issues.” All well and good – until you poke a little more deeply and find that ‘Most participants wanted to learn specific exercises that they could perform to manage their LBP’ – and that was about all these authors extracted about self management from all these studies. The context of these studies we...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Coping Skills Low back pain Professional topics Science in practice Clinical reasoning healthcare pain management self-management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs