The gap between pain management – and returning to work
One of the most satisfying experiences I have in my job is seeing someone who has been off work for ages finally return to work. It’s like seeing the person open up and bloom again. I often see people who have been off work for several years – most of them don’t have jobs to … Read more
Goals or actions?
Goals seem to work best when they’re important to the person, and the person has sufficient confidence that they’re going to be achieved. But…’there is many a slip betwixt cup and lip’ – while the goal might be set, actually getting there depends on many things. I wonder whether we can inadvertently slip up when … Read more
“I thought if I held out long enough, someone would find a cure”
I’ve written about acceptance before (here) , (here) oh and (here) – it’s one of those topics that seems to come up again and again (or is that ‘cos I’m looking for it?!). I have been reading about self efficacy beliefs especially relating to beliefs about returning to work, and the thought crossed my mind … Read more
Self efficacy for returning to work
Of the two dimensions I usually assess with people not working because of chronic pain, lack of importance given to returning to work is often identified by ‘onlookers’ as the main reason someone hasn’t yet returned. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard about ‘secondary gain’ getting in the way of people making progress … Read more
Flexible goals and distress: a research study
As I mentioned yesterday, finding research articles on goal-setting in chronic pain is not easy – there are not many out there! So this article is reasonably old, but an interesting one because it deals with something I’ve wondered about for a while: flexibility. To be flexible doesn’t just mean being able to touch your … Read more
Feedback, difficulty and satisfaction: goals!
To summarise yesterday’s post, this quote from Latham & Locke (2007): The theory of goal setting states that there is a positive linear relationship between a specific high goal and task performance. Thus, the theory makes explicit that a specific high goal leads to even higher performance than urging people to do their best. A … Read more
Practical and useful goal-setting theory?
Some people doubt the existance of a theory that happens to be either practical or useful, but perhaps this review (which is now relatively old, but still good!) will prove the rule. While this review covers goal-setting within an industrial/organisational context, it still offers some helpful advice and findings from both experimental and ‘field’ research. … Read more
Goal setting: A critical skill for change
Pain management is many things to many people, but most of us would agree that if life hasn’t changed in some way after pain management, then it hasn’t really been effective. For change to actually happen and be maintained, Prochaska and DiClemente and others (eg Miller, Rollnick and colleagues) identify that people must believe the … Read more
Work is the context
For many years I’ve worked in pain management and tried to help people return to work as the completion of their rehabilitation. Why? Well, apart from it being a great thing from an insurer or funder’s point of view, it’s actually what people want. Having been through my own return to work rehabilitation after my … Read more
A brief ponder
Complete opinion today…! I’m pondering why we as clinicians can be so scared about increasing our patient’s pain levels. And why patients are so fearful of increases in pain. I spoke with a new group of people starting a pain management programme yesterday. I told them, as I tell all the new groups, that their … Read more
