By Pete Moore 
What, a patient teaching healthcare professionals about self-managing pain? That’s not something you read or hear everyday, is it?
I’ve been promoting the pain self-management message for 20+ years since attending a pain management programme in London in 1996.
I’ve been running interactive half-day Pain Toolkit workshops for healthcare professionals since 2008, to help them learn how to guide their patients in simple pain self-management skills. Check out this brief video clip: 
Why do I run them? Like patients, doctors and healthcare professionals told me they struggle knowing when and how to promote pain self-management to patients, especially in timed based appointments, so I thought it would be useful to develop a workshop especially for them.
I soon discovered there were another couple of reasons why they struggled:
- All healthcare professionals, it seems, are taught in the medical model and pain self-management is something they have to learn on the job.
- Pain self-management is about keeping patients in the driving seat. The medical model puts patients in the passenger seat. Do you know of anyone who learnt to drive sitting in the passenger seat?
- Until medical schools include pain self-management within their curriculum, healthcare professionals are likely to continue to struggle.
Healthcare professionals on the half-day Pain Toolkit workshop will learn:
- The meaning of pain self-management and how it can support the patient
- How to activate patients to self-manage and promote self- management to them in time-based appointments
- How to promote action planning, problem solving, dealing with setbacks and self-monitoring
All my workshops, including the patient workshop, are interactive and of course we have a little fun as well!
Participants can get a free Pain Toolkit Healthcare Professional Handbook if they request it by email. Self-management is about taking action and by asking participants to email me they demonstrate self-management in action on their part.
Other resources to make learning about pain self-management interesting and fun include:
- Pain Toolkit on-line Game
- Pain Tips on-line Game
- Pain Toolkit Quiz for Healthcare Professionals and Patients
- Pain Toolkit Podcast
If you would like more information about pain self-management and the Pain Toolkit Workshops, please send me an email pete.moore@paintoolkit.org.
Looking forward to seeing you for the 2018 Australian Pain Society 38th and New Zealand Pain Society Conjoint Annual Scientific Meeting, to be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney this April.
Registrations are open:
Click here to register for the 2018 APS 38th and NZPS Conjoint ASM.
Australian Pain Society 