We understand that chronic pain causes considerable worry and stress for you and your family. We aim to reduce the impact of pain on your life.
Coming to talk to several people at once may seem scary, however we are all interested to learn about how pain affects you. Having a team approach means we can provide co-ordinated advice for your needs.
We know from the experience of patients and young people, those who engage fully with all aspects of our service benefit the most.
The Pain Consultant
- They are expert doctors in managing chronic or recurrent pain in children and young people.
- They will ask you about how the pain first started, what it feels like, and how pain impacts different areas of your life.
- The Doctor will ask lots of different questions about the pain, how it affects you, what it prevents you from doing and examine you
- They will advise about medicines which may be helpful to manage chronic pain.
- Medicines to help with chronic pain are usually not the whole answer but can reduce the level of pain to allow you to begin to participate with other members of the team to manage things better.
- The doctor may also make referrals to other specialists and services when appropriate.
- You may not see the doctor as often as other members of the team, but they lead the team and keep in touch regularly with all the team members to co-ordinate your pain management plan.
Dr H Neary; Dr J Haidon; Dr S Kelly; Dr E Jones
The Clinical Psychologist
- A Clinical Psychologist aims to understand how a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours can interact with each other.
- We are aware that how we feel emotionally can affect how we feel physically, and we know that having a health condition can itself affect our moods and feelings. They provide guidance on managing the range of emotions that you may feel living with chronic pain.
- A Clinical Psychologist will help you think about how you would prefer things to be and will support you to work towards achieving your goals.
- They can encourage and educate on coping strategies to manage pain; and offer support to improve concentration, sleep pattern and self-esteem.
- As part of helping you to understand and learn ways to manage your pain symptoms, we may offer to meet with you and your family, either separately or together.
- There are many different ways in which support may be provided:
- Listening
- Exploring who you are away from symptoms.
- We may ask you about school, family and friends.
- We can help you to make decisions about your health care.
- Help with managing difficulties such as sleep.
- Thinking about things which may make symptoms better or worse.
- Setting goals and problem solving.
- Working together to explore the impact of symptoms on how you think, feel and behave.
- When there is no medical explanation for your pain.
D Jordan
The Physiotherapist
- Physiotherapists understand the effects of pain on the body and are interested in how pain has affected your mobility, activity levels and independence.
- Physiotherapy is a really important tool to help you to manage chronic pain.
- They offer support via exercises to improve your pain management and planning how to do your activities to reduce the impact of pain on your goals.
- You might hear that you are deconditioned. This means that you have lost fitness or muscle strength due to lack of exercise. We appreciate that this may have happened because of your experience of pain. Maybe you have tried to exercise however this has caused pain, and you have lost confidence to try again. Physiotherapy can help with strengthening and stretching muscles which may now be causing pain.
- Physiotherapy is not just about learning exercises, we are also able to tailor activities to help you to get back to socialising with friends again, or any of the other things which you would like to do. We can get you started by completing a slow, phased rehabilitation programme.
- We can educate you on how to pace your activity so that it does not result in a large increase in pain. We believe that you can achieve your desirable goal(s), however we may need to go at a slower pace with regular breaks to get there. As we progress and as you get stronger, your need for breaks will hopefully become less frequent, as your confidence increases to do more.
J McDonald; J Duggan; S Acheson
Specialist Pain Nurse
- Clinical Nurse Specialists will help to co-ordinate your care within the pain team, and be your point of contact.
- They provide support and follow up throughout your time with the chronic pain service.
- We can offer support with pain management strategies and techniques which are not medicine based, such as TENs, acupuncture and relaxation.
- We also have experience and knowledge of medicines used in chronic pain and we can review medicines and provide guidance around potential side effects and managing medication when appropriate.
J Suttle; S Sinha
Chronic Pain Co-Ordinator
- Our chronic pain co-ordinator arranges appointments with the team
- They receive the referral letter and process it for the team to review and prioritise.
- They can be contacted if you have questions about your appointments or need to move it.
K Quigley
How does each area help?
Medicines
Medicines help with:
- Reducing the number of pain messages transmitted to the brain
- Joining in with physiotherapy & psychology
- Sleep pattern
Psychology
Psychology helps with:
- Fears and anxiety about pain
- Relaxation
- Sleeping problems
Physiotherapy
Physiotherapy helps with:
- Movement
- Exercise
- Motivation
- Self-esteem
- Goals