What do people want from pain management?
The short answer is often “take my pain away” – and we’d be foolish to ignore the impact of pain intensity on distress and disability. At the same time there’s more than enough research showing that if treatment only emphasises pain intensity (1) it may not be achievable for many, especially if we take into account the small effect sizes on pain intensity from exercise, medications and psychological therapies; and (2) even if pain is reduced, it may not translate into improvements in daily life.
The slightly more complex answer lies behind the desire to “take my pain away.” We n...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 19, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Research Science in practice Occupational therapy pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Discover the power of occupational therapy: a solution for doctors and patients
Many of us physicians are starting off 2023 with various new resolutions, including efficiency and “doing better,” but how do we get there? Our variable training experiences may prevent us from working with health professionals around us who can make our life easier and more efficient. Occupational therapists (or OTs) are that magical unicorn you
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Discover the power of occupational therapy: a solution for doctors and patients originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 17, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Maryna Mammoliti, MD Tags: Physician Primary Care Source Type: blogs
“ N-of-1 ” research – A clinically relevant research strategy!
I’ve been banging on about single case experimental research designs (SCED) ever since I studied with Prof Neville Blampied at University of Canterbury. Prof Blampied (now retired) was enthusiastic about this approach because it allows clinicians to scientifically test whether an intervention has an effect in an individual – but he took it further with a very cool graphical analysis that allows multiple cases to be studied and plotted using the modified Brinley Plot (Blampied, 2017), and I’ll be discussing it later in this series. Suffice to say, I love this approach to research because it allows clinicia...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - February 12, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Coping Skills Occupational therapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs
How occupational therapy can help the anxiety epidemic [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! In this episode, we have Taylor Gurley, a professor of occupational therapy as our guest. She will be discussing the new recommendation by the United States Preventive Services Task Force for primary care physicians to screen their patients for mental health concerns, specifically anxiety.
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How occupational therapy can help the anxiety epidemic [PODCAST] originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 9, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: The Podcast by KevinMD Tags: Podcast Psychiatry Source Type: blogs
If a rose is a rose by any other name, how should we study treatment processes in pain management & rehabilitation?
A new instalment in my series about intensive longitudinal studies, aka ecological momentary assessment (and a host of other names for methods used to study daily life in real time in the real world).
Daily life is the focus of occupational therapy – doing what needs to be done, or a person wants to do, in everyday life. It’s complex because unlike a laboratory (or a large, well-controlled randomised controlled trial) daily life is messy and there is no way to control all the interacting factors that influence why a person does what they do. A technical term for the processes involved is microtemporality, o...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - January 29, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Assessment Clinical reasoning Professional topics Research Science in practice intensive longitudinal research Occupational therapy Pain rehabilitation research methods single case experimental design Source Type: blogs
Pain concepts for practice: Occupational therapists
Registration opens 11 Feburary 2023, click here for more details – click
Numbers limited to 20 to ensure a great learning experience.
Fundamental concepts for clinical practice including pain neurobiology, assessment, formulation and therapy. (Source: HealthSkills Weblog)
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - January 16, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Occupational therapy Professional topics Clinical reasoning Pain pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
One family ’s disastrous experience with a growth-driven long-term care company
by “E-PATIENT” DAVE DEBRONKART
Continuing THCB’s occasional series on actual experiences with the health care system. This is the first in a short series about a patient and family experience from one of America’s leading ePatients.
I’ve been blogging recently about what happens in American healthcare when predatory investor-driven companies start moving into care industries because the money’s good and enforcement is lax. The first two posts were about recent articles in The New Yorker on companies that are more interested in sales and growth than caring. I now have permission ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 10, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care ePatient Dave Patient Experience Respite care Source Type: blogs
New year, new you! 10 Steps to Change Your Life!
Are you setting goals for this year? Did you decide to get fit? Eat healthier? Spend more time with your family? Be more mindful? Read on for my famous 10 steps to change your life!
Bah, humbug!
Reflect for a moment on what you’ve just read. Head to Google and do a search using the terms “New Year” and see what you come up with. My search page showed, amongst all the horrific news of car smashes and events for the holiday season, topics like “New Year Bootcamp: Get rid of your debt”, “cook something new every week”, “read more books”, “create a cleaning sch...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - January 8, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Motivation Occupational therapy Research Science in practice biopsychosocial contentment goals Health healthcare New Year Source Type: blogs
Persistent pain and movement practices
Here I go, stepping into “the bio” to write about movement. Oh dear, what am I doing?
Movement practices of various kinds are part and parcel of pain management. In fact, to read some of the material in social media-land, exercise is the be-all and end-all of pain management, maybe with a dash of psychology. Can we please stop doing this?
I’ve said it often, for many forms of persistent pain, especially the most common forms – nonspecific chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritic pain – movement is a good thing, but the effect sizes are small for both pain intensity and d...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 18, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Low back pain Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Psychology Resilience/Health Science in practice movement optimism movement practices pain management Research Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
The joy of having many data points
Researchers and clinicians are drawn to studies with many participants. Especially randomised controlled trials, where two groups are randomly divided and one gets “the real thing” while the other does not. The joy comes from knowing that results from these kinds of studies suggest that, all things being equal, the differences between the groups is “real” and not just by chance.
When we come to analyse the graphs from these kinds of studies, what we hope to see are two nice bell-shaped curves, with distinct peaks (the arithmetic mean) and long tails either side – and a clear separation betw...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 11, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Assessment Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice Uncategorized Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Health pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
On making things easier … Occupational therapists and ‘ compensatory ’ approaches
If there is one part of occupational therapy practice that gets more of my middle-aged grumpiness than any other, it’s occupational therapists using compensatory approaches for managing pain. And like anything, it’s complicated and nuanced. So here’s my attempt to work my way through the quagmire.
Compensatory approaches consist of a whole range of interventions that aim to “make up for” a deficit in a person’s occupational performance (see Nicholson & Hayward (2022) for a discussion of compensatory approaches in “functional neurological disorder”). The rationale for c...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 4, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping Skills Coping strategies Occupational therapy Pain conditions Professional topics Research Science in practice compensatory strategies pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
The #1 Secret Weapon for Healing Mental Health
Life is tough.
There is so much worry and sadness. Listlessness, obsessive thinking and overall lack of energy are just some of the symptoms that are telltale signs of underlying depression and anxiety.
How do people deal with these mental health issues? There’s medication, of course, but understandably, not everyone is interested in medicating.
Psychotherapy has helped lots of people but I’ve seen that 1/3 of the people who go to psychotherapy find that it doesn’t help. As Deepak Chopra noted, “75% of people who improve their psychological state do so not with a therapist’s help, but by thems...
Source: PickTheBrain | Motivation and Self Improvement - October 26, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Faigie Kobre Tags: creativity depression featured philosophy psychology self-improvement Source Type: blogs
What do occupational therapists add to pain management/rehabilitation?
Coming from a small profession that has side-stepped (more or less) a conventional biomedical model, I’ve found my inclusion in pain management and rehabilitation is not always easily understood by other clinicians. It doesn’t help that occupational therapists practice in very diverse settings, and what we do may look superficially like handing out raised toilet seats, playing with kids, doing work-site assessments or hand therapy!
Today I hope to remedy this a bit, and extend a challenge to clinicians from other professions to sum up what your profession adds in 25 words or less (the first sentence in this...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - October 16, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Professional topics Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Ways to stop good clinicians leaving pain management (iii)
I’m an old hack when it comes to teamwork and pain management: I’ve worked in this field a long time. I’m familiar with reactions to both interpersonal differences within a team (and the myriad ways these can be expressed), and to the discourse that happens when posting a publicly available message. In fact, that’s why I publish on social media: so we can have open conversations rather than ones hidden behind paywalls, or in rarified academic settings. Humans are odd, and when poked – even when poked with good evidence – want to react, to bite back. The following comments are not about any specific organisation...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - September 19, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice conflict healthcare teamwork Source Type: blogs
Meet the Editors: Jonathan M. Amiel, MD
What are your roles and responsibilities with Academic Medicine?
I am an assistant editor at Academic Medicine. In this role, I review new submissions to the journal, designate submissions for peer review, work collaboratively with our fabulous editors and editorial staff to determine editorial decisions, and help authors to finalize their work for publication. As part of this process, I also engage in professional development, learning about research methods and participating in team learning and discussions.
What do you enjoy most about your work with Academic Medicine?
For work that is primarily asynchronous an...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - September 6, 2022 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: amrounds Tags: Meet the Editors scholarly publishing Source Type: blogs
