Clinical reasoning in persistent pain management

I think we need to take a cold hard look at clinical reasoning in pain management and especially at how we can integrate all the various factors influencing the person sitting in front of us. There are too few papers really addressing how different professions can put their assessment findings together to generate a truly multi-faceted model of why this person is having trouble with their pain. I could find only one paper detailing interprofessional clinical reasoning for chronic pain – and it’s inside a textbook dates from 2008 (Linton & Nicholas, 2008). So it’s no wonder, when a team gets together, that we collectively find it difficult to work together. The approach discussed by Linton and Nicholas was the way I was trained to work, so I’m biased. Nevertheless I think this is a practical and useful way of putting the jigsaw puzzle together to see how each factor influences every other factor. I’m not suggesting that every case should be formulated this way – but I do find myself using the same strategy for every person I see. We all do a bunch of assessments when we first see a person. But then what do we do with all that material? As Linton and Nicholas say, most assessments are used to document the intensity of the problem. Case formulations try to identify the main problems experienced by the person – and then generate hypotheses about the mechanisms supporting those problems for this person sitting in front of me. So here&#...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Pain conditions Professional topics biopsychosocial Chronic pain pain management Source Type: blogs