Chronic Pain Education
Dean Ornish once said, “Awareness-mindfulness-is the first step in healing.” The authors of the article Vets Adopt Alternative Treatments for Chronic-Pain After Education would certainly agree. When we think about it, chronic pain is not just something that appears during a clinical visit. Chronic pain is on-going so we need tools to deal with it on a daily basis. Chronic pain education is that first step in healing.
Veterans with chronic pain accessed more complementary and alternative treatments at a Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center after attending a “pain education school,” and those participating in a functional medicine clinic reported reductions in perceived stress and musculoskeletal pain, according to results of two studies presented at the PAINWeek 2017 meeting.
The lead investigator of both studies, David Cosio, PhD, a health psychologist at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, in Chicago, told Pain Medicine News that while the VA system requires its facilities to offer at least two alternatives to traditional medical approaches to chronic pain, the pain treatment center serves a tristate area and offers 23 complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) options.
Dr. Cosio and his co-investigator Erica Lin, PharmD, a clinical pharmacy specialist also at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, conducted an analysis of data from their previous study of participation in an innovative pain education initiative to determine what “take-away” lessons might be reflected in the behavior of the participants after completing the coursework.
Upon entry into the pain education program, 44% of subjects (n=45) had not used any type of CAM. In the remaining 56%, CAM was used in different combinations, with 30% active, 41% passive and 36% transitional. After completing the program, 86% of subjects were accessing CAM treatments, and many more had entered into active modalities (24%) than passive (12%) or transitional (14%).
“As we educate people about the existence of these treatments, they are going to use them,” Dr. Cosio said. “I think that part of the problem [is] that patients may not be aware of the complementary and alterative medicine options that are available.”
Source: Vets Adopt Alternative Treatments for Chronic Pain After Education – Pain Medicine News
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