Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Programs
People with moderate-to-severe, persistent pain often come to a pain rehabilitation program because they want more out of life. It is not so much that they are looking for outright pain relief, since they’ve had pain for so long they know it isn't going away altogether. What they are looking for instead is to be able to get back into life and do activities that they no longer do.
This past summer, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed into law an omnibus health and human services budget bill and in so doing he marked a significant milestone in the recent history of chronic pain management. The bill contained language, introduced by State Representative Deb Kiel and State Senator Jim Abler, authorizing the trial of a new payment arrangement through Medical Assistance, which makes it possible for state recipients of the public health insurance to receive care within an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation program.
I am nearing the end of a forty-five minute initial evaluation for our interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation clinic and my patient is an amiable woman in her late forties from the suburbs. She drove a minivan to the clinic and attends the evaluation while her three children are at school for the day. Her primary care provider had referred her to us because of her chronic and disabling low back pain, which over the years had become progressively worse and more widespread.
A central tenet of chronic pain rehabilitation is that what initially caused your pain is often not now the only thing that's maintaining your pain on a chronic course. Let’s unpack this important statement. It’s no accident that healthcare providers commonly refer to chronic pain syndromes as complex chronic pain or complicated chronic pain.
The Institute for Chronic Pain has a new content page on our website entitled: Why Healthcare Providers Deliver Ineffective Care. As is our custom, we announce such additions to the website on our blog and provide a little introduction to it. The content on this new page of the website is particularly important to me because providing content like it is one of the reasons why I founded the Institute. It’s not too far of a stretch to say that it’s why we do what we do. By way of introduction, then, I’d like to explain.
It’s an interesting fact about the field of chronic pain management that there is a safe and effective alternative to the use of opioids for chronic pain, but relatively few people know about it. The alternative to opioids is an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation program.
The Institute for Chronic Pain (ICP) would like to welcome a guest post by Jen of Pain Camp. Camper Jen, as she goes by, is the founder of Pain Camp, which is a wonderful blog and website on chronic pain from the perspective of someone who has chronic pain and who has participated in a chronic pain rehabilitation program. Her site, as well as her personal story, is one of how to go from SURVIVING to THRIVING despite having chronic pain. Her spirit is admirable and her testimony is inspiring.
How do you know if you are ready to participate in a chronic pain rehabilitation program?
Chronic pain rehabilitation programs defined
Chronic pain rehabilitation programs are a traditional form of chronic pain management.
