The session, which was hosted by Grünenthal UK Ltd in association with The Patients Association, sought to raise awareness of the issue and to put forward innovative ideas aimed at improving the lives of those suffering from it.
The discussion was chaired by Katherine Murphy from The Patients Association, alongside a distinguished panel of healthcare experts and patients with first-hand experience of the issue, including Martin McShane, NHS England’s Director for Long Term Conditions.
Mr McShane highlighted the burden of chronic pain and its disabling effects on patients’ physical and mental well-being. Having experienced it himself he said: “nothing consumes you like pain”.
Fellow panel member Antony Chuter, a patient who has lived with chronic pain for over twenty years, described a turning point in his experience when he worked with a GP who admitted that he didn’t know the answer but suggested working through it together.
This approach, he asserted, of putting patients at the centre of the process and seeking long-term, bespoke solutions was crucial to making progress.
Building on this point Pamela Bell, Chair of the Pain Association of Northern Ireland, said: “We are not meeting the needs of people who suffer with long term pain. There are a lot of issues, patients do not feel supported to become self-managers, and they describe long waiting and referral times and limited access to therapy.”
Ms Bell was involved in a recent report by Northern Ireland’s Patient and Client Council entitled The Painful Truth, which made ten recommendations to improve treatment such as more education for healthcare professionals, patients and their families and carers.
A number of panellists identified the rigidity of the traditional healthcare model as an obstacle for patients dealing with chronic pain and suggested relieving pressure on GPs and embracing self-management and community based care.
Chris Rose, an independent prescribing pharmacist who designed a community pharmacy model for reviewing chronic pain patients, said under the current system patients were bouncing around from primary to secondary care.
This sentiment was echoed by Johanna Theron, a specialist doctor (previous GPwSI), who works in the community chronic pain service for Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Describing her own work in the field, she said: “we do as much as possible in the community and utilise a multidisciplinary team to offer a bio-psycho-social model of services with a single point of access to the service. They cover medicines management, education, physiotherapy, psychology and non-pharmocological modalities like tai-chi or acupuncture.”
Differences across the health service in standards were also highlighted as an obstacle for patients, with Jacqui Lyttle, Non-executive Director at South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, calling for equalisation and change in areas where pain services need improvement.
Identifying progress that is already being made in this area, Martin Johnson, a GP who is also co-chair of the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition (CPPC), Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP)’s Clinical Lead for pain and Honorary Secretary at the British Pain Society (BPS), praised organisations that are driving for improvements and hailed the creation of an ICD10 code for chronic pain which will help map the patient pathway and quantify the problem.
Summarising proceedings, Mr McShane stressed the need to continue to make progress in this vital and often overlooked area of healthcare, adding: “you should pray for a healthy body and a healthy mind”.