Chronic pain is not a mental illness

In New Zealand at least, obtaining training in pain and pain management is fairly restricted. Two papers specifically on pain and pain management for ‘all-comers’ are run through my Department at University of Otago, Christchurch, but apart from this - I’m not sure of any others at postgraduate level. Occupational therapists have the [...]

Ongoing education

Today I received my regular monthly e-letter from Pain.com.
What a wonderful thing the internet is!! Brought right to my inbox on my laptop, well-written, authoritative ongoing education about pain.
What’s in the newsletter this month?
A couple of pharmaceutical items on polypharmacology:
Pharmacologic Management of Chronic Pain: NSAIDs to Opioids, and Chronic Pain Management with Opioids: Prevention [...]

Cognitive behaviour for pain worksheet - client information

It’s not always easy to find freely available client worksheets that reflect ‘real life’ situations, and are written for the age and reading level of the people we often see. For example, most of the people I work with are practical ‘hands-on’ people who don’t like reading or writing, and are either very visual [...]

CBT Workshop!

If you’re wanting a short, practical and interactive workshop on using cognitive and behavioural approaches for managing chronic pain, book yourself in for the CBT Workshop on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th May 2008.
This workshop is an introduction to using cognitive and behavioural approaches with people experiencing chronic pain, and is designed for occupational therapists, physiotherapists, [...]

Words, words, words

What’s in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose by any other name…but those thorns still hurt.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me… except at night when I’m lying awake and worrying…

Well as we all know, words do hurt, and often unwittingly especially in the area [...]

A great resource!

After yesterday’s great video (found on YouTube), I spent a little time time skimming through the titles held here at University of California Television. If you click the link you’ll be taken to a list of the titles I found under the keyword ‘Pain’. What an incredible resource!
Some of these are free, while [...]

The future of psychological management of chronic pain

One of my guru’s in chronic pain is Dr Lance McCracken from University of Bath.
I found this great powerpoint presentation, with his voiceover today, on the future of psychology in chronic pain. A great lecture that is well worth saving some time and listening to. Grab a couple of colleagues, a bottle of [...]

Shouldering on…

When did you last review your shoulder anatomy?
While looking for some information for a presentation I’m doing shortly on shoulder pain, I stumbled across this site - a real wealth of illustrated information on shoulder anatomy, pathology and therapy. It even includes a GREAT description of occupational therapy in shoulder rehabilitation! Now that’s [...]

Mulling over balance in the biopsychosocial…

For some years I’ve taught a postgraduate course in pain and pain management - my responsibility is to teach the psychosocial components, while I coordinate the content of both papers.  Recently I had a discussion with a colleague who suggested that the psychosocial component was over-represented, while the biophysical was under-represented.
At the time I didn’t [...]

A free resource!

Some years ago I found Amedeo.com, a free contents service that delivers right to your inbox - and more!
If you find it really hard to keep up with the new information because it’s just so hard to find it, this service is a great way to make sure you get regular contents pages from some [...]