Last week I started a series of posts on how we can stop good clinicians leaving pain management. I began with funding because, at least in New Zealand, lack of funding is a significant part of the problem of staff retention.
Now I want to look at how we prepare clinicians to work in pain management.
One of the major barriers in New Zealand is the dominance of musculoskeletal rehabilitation in physiotherapy clinics around the country. How could direct access to musculoskeletal rehabilitation be a bad thing, you ask? Well, it’s mainly because pain management is not musculoskeletal rehabilitation – and yet most of the workforce for pain management here comes from musculoskeletal physiotherapists.
I like physiotherapists, some of them are even very good friends! And I recognise that good physiotherapists have moved a long way from the old “back school” staff sergeant approach! Many physiotherapists have developed their skills well beyond analysing pelvic tilt and using “special tests” with limited inter-rater reliability and even less predictive validity. There are good physio’s who are skilled in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, who routinely look at values and use motivational approaches in their clinical practice.
But, how well are new graduate physiotherapists (and indeed other entry-level health professionals) prepared for chronic pain work? (remember that many clinics in NZ employ entry-level therapists because they’re inexpensive, and chronic pain management isn’t a very profitable area – and staff turnover is a thing).
Unlike acute and subacute musculoskeletal rehabilitation, regression to the mean (ie returning to a baseline level of capability) doesn’t happen much in chronic pain rehab. Natural history doesn’t happen either, not four or more years after the original onset. Most treatments for chronic pain show very small effect sizes on both pain intensity and disability.
Progress towards goals is slow, and there are many – many! – flare-ups, set-backs, detours and plateaus. Because pain problems have lasted longer than expected, people have had time to worry, to be given inaccurate information, to have had poor sleep for ages, to have stopped doing the things that bring life into life, to have had several unsuccessful treatments – consequently, people with chronic pain often hold negative expectations about how effective a treatment will be.
How well do we prepare entry-level clinicians for the challenges of treatments not working? Despite the therapist “doing all the right things”?? Do we prepare them for the ambiguity and uncertainty of working without a clear diagnosis? without an algorithm? without a “simplifying process”? Chronic pain is complex!
How well do we prepare entry-level therapists not to take responsibility for a person’s outcomes? Or do we inculcate them into the idea that they must “get it right” all the time or they’ve “done something wrong”?
Do we spend so much time teaching a certain school of therapy, or set of special tests, that we forget to help them learn to listen well first? Do we teach them that mind and body are separate – and that psychological and psychosocial only come into play when “the bio” has failed to respond to treatment? Do we imply this, even inadvertently?
When do we teach entry-level therapists how to deal with therapy failure? How to work in the dark? How to revise their formulation when a treatment doesn’t have the intended effect? Where do we teach entry-level therapists how to seek and accept supervision – and how do we help them view supervision as a supportive opportunity to develop as a person and therapist?
And how well do we prepare entry-level clinicians to work well in a team, where they’ll come into contact with other clinicians seemingly “stepping into my scope”? In other words, where other clinicians have broad skills and experience, and who do what they do… Do we teach undergraduates how to be confident enough in their professional value that they stop being defensive?
Solutions, that’s right. I was going to suggest solutions.
Solutions include much more time working with other professions during training – and not just the ones handy to where they’re being trained. Solutions include ensuring the process of clinical reasoning is emphasised rather than the outcome. Solutions involve teaching undergraduates that they will carry on learning and that more experienced therapists from other professions will teach them a lot. Solutions might include ensuring that all students spend regular time with a supervisor who is not there to “correct” them, but instead to foster their self-reflection, to offer them support when they’re feeling overwhelmed, to encourage them to be OK to feel lost and not know the answers. And perhaps solutions involve recognising that chronic pain management is a specialist area of practice, and it is not musculoskeletal rehabilitation with a psychosocial twist.
Gordon, D. B., Watt-Watson, J., & Hogans, B. B. (2018). Interprofessional pain education-with, from, and about competent, collaborative practice teams to transform pain care. Pain Reports, 3(3), e663. https://doi.org/10.1097/PR9.0000000000000663
Lindblad, T. L. (2021, Jun). Ethical Considerations in Clinical Supervision: Components of Effective Clinical Supervision Across an Interprofessional Team. Behavior Analysis in Practice 14(2), 478-490. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-020-00514-y
O’Carroll, V., Owens, M., Sy, M., El-Awaisi, A., Xyrichis, A., Leigh, J., Nagraj, S., Huber, M., Hutchings, M., & McFadyen, A. (2021, May-Jun). Top tips for interprofessional education and collaborative practice research: a guide for students and early career researchers. J Interprof Care, 35(3), 328-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2020.1777092
Perreault, K., Dionne, C. E., Rossignol, M., Poitras, S., & Morin, D. (2018, Jul). What are private sector physiotherapists’ perceptions regarding interprofessional and intraprofessional work for managing low back pain? Journal of Interprofessional Care, 32(4), 525-528. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2018.1451829
Steuber, T. D., Andrus, M. R., Wright, B. M., Blevins, N., & Phillippe, H. M. (2021). Effect of Interprofessional Clinical Debates on Attitudes of Interprofessional Teams. PRiMER, 5, 14. https://doi.org/10.22454/PRiMER.2021.154149