Community Pain Management
The Pain Management Service provides support, education and short-term pain management treatment for patients with chronic pain.
What is Chronic Pain?
Chronic or long-term pain is pain that carries on much longer than expected after an illness or injury.
If you get injured, it is normal for your body to take between 3 and 6 months to heal and pain to stop. This is called ‘acute’ pain or ‘short term’ pain.
However, for some, this pain can continue beyond 6 months, even after your body has healed.
In the UK, about 30 million people live with chronic pain.
If you have chronic pain, you may find that your medication doesn’t work as well long-term, and you want to find another way of managing your pain.
Community Pain Management
To help manage your symptoms the Community Chronic Pain Management service provide education, physiotherapy, physical activity, and psychology sessions which are proven to have an impact.
We understand how frustrating chronic pain can be and we will work with you and support you to gain a better understanding of your pain and how to manage it to improve your quality of life.
Referral Criteria:
You must:
- Be 18 years old or over
- Have eperienced pain for more than 3 months, although less than 3 months will be accepted if there is a risk of the pain becoming chronic
- Have a diagnosis of chronic, non-malignant pain
- Not already be receiving pain management care
Service Exclusion Criteria:
We cannot help with:
- A musculoskeletal (MSK) condition that has not been triaged by Community MSK Services
- Acute pain/pain for less than 3 months, unless there is a risk of the pain becoming chronic.
- Known/suspected pathology requiring further investigation
- Pre-natal back pain/pelvic pain
- If you are under the age of 18
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (unless the main symptom is pain)
- Palliative pain
