Changing the perception of pain

Mersey Care’s Community Pain Management Service has developed a suite of videos to raise awareness about how they help reduce the impact of living with persistent pain.

The service, based in Ainsdale and led by Clinical Lead, Dr Chris Barker, has released the videos in early September to coincide with Pain Awareness Month and their twentieth anniversary as a service.

They want the videos to explain the importance of what they do so local GPs and referrers have a raised awareness of the benefits of the service, while they also want to ease the fears for those referred to them about what to expect. According to the British Medical Journal, around 28 million adults in the UK live with chronic pain.

“Science has moved on in the last few years and our understanding of pain has developed,” explained Dr Barker. “There is increasing evidence to show persistent pain is often less related to structural things like changes in joints, muscles or nerves, and is more often driven by changes in the nervous system.

“These changes can mean our pain ‘volume control’ can stop working properly, making pain more intrusive. Science also shows us that retraining this system can help.

“Our job is to listen carefully to patients, understand their pain and what matters to them. We can then decide together which pain management strategies to focus on individually.”

The multi-professional service is made up of specialists including a doctor, psychologist, physiotherapists, a pharmacist, and therapy assistant. They aim to empower patients through fully understanding pain and the individual things that can help. This approach has been shown scientifically to help minimise symptoms, increase wellbeing and function, and improve chances of recovery

They offer one to one work, as well as group-based pain management programmes. Patients can also be supported by the service’s ‘experts by experience’ - people who themselves live with persistent pain.

Sheila Brom from Southport, said: “I was living on painkillers. I was in tears every morning, just trying to get dressed. When my GP sent me to the pain management service, I didn’t really know how they would be able to help me. I almost didn’t go – I’m so thankful I did as it’s changed my life.”

Sefton residents are able to refer to the Community Pain Management Service via a GP, physiotherapist or consultant and can access the new suite of videos on the Mersey Care website.