Tag: chronic pain

September Is Pain Awareness Month

The month of September has been designated as Pain Awareness Month to shine a light on the 100 million Americans who live with chronic pain.

Pain is invisible. It cannot be seen, touched, or measured. But it is still very real for the 100 million Americans whose lives are impacted by chronic pain on a daily basis.

Yet, chronic pain is often misunderstood and invalidated by the chronic pain patient’s family, friends, coworkers, and even their healthcare providers.

To help the public understand the debilitating impacts of chronic pain, September has been designated as Pain Awareness Month.

“The only way we can create change is if we start speaking up–to loved ones, coworkers, neighbors, clinicians, and even policymakers,” said Nicole Hemmenway, Interim CEO of U.S. Pain Foundation, in a statement about Pain Awareness Month released this week. “Pain is silent, but we don’t have to be.”

Physical Therapists are often on the front lines when it comes to treating this silent epidemic. Through exercise, manual therapy, education, and teamwork, the therapy community helps chronic pain patients improve their quality of life, in place of dangerous and highly-addictive medications, such as opioids.

This September, take the time to speak with your patients about their pain, even more than you usually would. Sometimes, being heard can make all the difference.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Federal Task Force Pushes PT as an Alternative to Opioids

A report released this week by an inter-agency task force highlights the benefits of physical therapy and other modalities in combatting the opioid crisis.

An inter-agency task force, comprised of 12 public members, nine organization representative members, and eight federal members, released a report this week, entitled Pain Management Best Practices, in an effort to offer updates, gaps, inconsistencies, and recommendations regarding the opioid crisis in relation to managing acute and chronic pain.

The report, which totals 108-pages, emphasizes “patient-centered care in the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic pain,” and features a thorough section regarding the benefits of restorative therapies, such as therapeutic exercise, massage therapy, traction, and more. The report goes on to urge an approach of multimodality, including medications, nerve blocks, physical therapy, and others to combat acute pain conditions, in place of opioids.

As it currently stands, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50 million adults in the U.S. struggle with the effects of chronic pain on a daily basis, and opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017—67.8% of all drug overdose deaths.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Treating Pain: It is Much More Than “This” vs. “That”

Persistent pain is complex and it is very unlikely that one magic bullet treatment is going to be the sole key to successful outcomes.

from Evidence in Motion

Trying to follow the evidence to determine the best intervention for your patients can be a challenge, especially when it comes to persistent pain. It can be a challenge when you read well-done reviews that seem to have slightly opposite conclusions.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Case Study: When Chronic Pain Leads to a Dangerous Addiction

How did an educated, elderly engineer wind up with a heroin habit?

from Scientific American

It was 4 P.M., and Andrew* had just bought 10 bags of heroin. In his kitchen, he tugged one credit-card-sized bag from the rubber-banded bundle and laid it on the counter with sacramental reverence. Pain shot through his body as he pulled a cutting board from the cabinet. Slowly, deliberately, he tapped the bag’s white contents onto the board and crushed it with the flat edge of a butter knife, forming a line of fine white powder. He snorted it in one pass and shuffled back to his armchair. It was bitter, but snorting heroin was safer than injecting, and he was desperate: his prescription pain medication was gone.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.