Exeter researcher to carry out major study of pain clinics in the south west
An Exeter-based researcher is to carry out an in-depth investigation into pain clinics in the south west, as part of a national study aimed at improving the service they provide to patients.
Pain clinics are used by people with arthritis and other types of long-term musculoskeletal conditions, but many patients who use them are disappointed by the service, finding they don’t meet their expectations.
Now a team led by sociologist Dr Geoff Harding from the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, has been awarded a two-year grant of almost £70,000 from the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) to find out more about how pain clinics work - and how they can be improved to meet patient need.
In previous arc-funded work, Dr Harding and his colleagues found that a majority of patients with chronic (long-term) musculoskeletal pain lost trust in the medical profession, and that they believed that doctors failed to take their pain seriously.
Pain clinics are run by multi-disciplinary teams of medical specialists led usually by an anaesthetist or rheumatologist and often including a physiotherapist, a psychologist, a nurse, and an occupational therapist. They are usually based within a hospital and often have long waiting lists.
They are usually the last port of call for patients who have already been treated in primary care and in hospital, some of whom have no obvious physical cause of pain, and may have been told by GPs that their pain was “all in the mind.” As a consequence, some patients have unrealistically high expectations of what pain clinics can do for them.
“Now that we’ve found out what patients think of pain clinics, we need to establish what the staff think about the service that they provide,” said Dr Harding. “Pain clinics vary enormously in the way they are run and how they treat people. For example some are led by anaesthetists and often focus on painkilling injections and others are led by specialists such as rheumatologists who offer different approaches to managing musculoskeletal pain, as well as employing staff from a wide range of backgrounds.
“Our investigation will identify the different beliefs and practices among the multi-disciplinary team working in pain clinics, and to find out how their approaches address the needs of those with chronic musculoskeletal pain.”
Among the pain clinics to take part in Dr Harding’s research are those located in Cornwall (Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust), Devon (Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust) and Somerset (Taunton and Somerset Hospital). Staff invited for interview will include medical, nursing, occupational, manual therapist and reception staff, in a bid to capture a wide range of different team members’ experiences and perspectives.
