Complexity and chronic pain*

*Persistent didn’t alliterate so well! I’ve been pondering what makes persistent pain so complicated? What is it about this problem that means clinicians use terms like ‘heart-sink’, or ‘problematic’, or ‘difficult’ when they talk about people living with pain? While nociception and all the associated neurobiological processes associated with pain are undoubtedly complex (and poorly understood), I don’t think this is what people mean when they describe chronic pain is complex. After all, there are loads of body systems and disease processes that are complex. I come back to ourselves. Yep. You and I and the way we were taught to think about health. Or should I say, disease. Because let’s face it, mostly we were taught about disease processes in our professional training, right? Health was something definitely discussed but then we studied all the things that can go wrong rather than all the things known to promote health. Here are some of the things we as clinicians could think about when we consider complexity and chronic pain. We can’t directly treat pain. Yes: you read it here. We don’t directly treat pain, because pain is an experience. While some of us might directly interact with the nociceptive system, most of us don’t. Instead, we interact with people. As clinicians, we think that people should do what we think will help them, and in doing so, pain ‘ought’ to red...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Professional topics Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs