Resources for people experiencing persistent or chronic pain
We are looking at ways we can improve how we help patients who are experiencing chronic or persistent pain. Below are some recourses to help understand different types of pain and the wide range of things that can help.
For chronic and persistent pain, research tells us that strong pain relief medications don’t help when taken long term. These include opiates such as morphine/codeine/tramadol/fentanyl or treatments for nerve pain such as gabapentin/pregabalin/amitryptiline.
We are looking at ways to support our patients to manage and live with their pain with a goal to reduce the use of strong pain medications that may not be beneficial to you and of course do have side effects.
Understanding Pain in less than five minutes. Here’s a short video that explains how pain works, this is a good place to start and helps understand what kind of things do and don’t help with persistent pain and why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KrUL8tOaQs#
We know that lifestyle changes, physical activity and mental health support can be really helpful for people managing persistent pain, here are some local initiatives that you may want to try if you’re not sure where to start:
· Lifestyle Clinic: Do you want to make changes to your lifestyle? Want support from Lifestyle doctors and health & wellbeing coaches? Want to be part of a free local community to help you achieve our goals?
Admin: Lifestyle Review Form
· Walk Talk Walk: A free walk for all abilities. A safe space to talk about anything and everything. Thursdays 11:20am at Croft Medical Centre, CV31 1SA.
https://www.croftmedical.co.uk/pages/Run-talk-run--walk-talk-walk
· Swimming: If you would like to experience being in the water to help your physical and mental health, then our new 'Swim Together' adult sessions could be for you (18 years old and over)! Leamington PCN have teamed up with Mental Health Swims, Swim England and Everyone Active to deliver these sessions. Led by our trained professionals, we will provide a safe space for you to enjoy the benefits of water, especially if swimming is something you've not tried before or for a very long time.
· Parkrun: free 5km walk/jog/run every Saturday 9am, our local ones are Newbold Comyn or Warwick racecourse. Everyone of any ability is welcome. https://www.parkrun.org.uk/
Helpful websites:
https://www.paintoolkit.org/
https://livewellwithpain.co.uk/
https://www.flippinpain.co.uk/
If you think you would benefit from a referral to the hospital multidisciplinary pain service, here is some more information, you can book to speak to one of the GPs about this.
https://www.swft.nhs.uk/our-services/adult-hospital-services/multi-disciplinary-pain-service