Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Perspectives on Rethinking Pain
Recently, we published an article in Frontiers in Pain Research titled Perspectives on community-based system change for people living with persistent pain: insights from developing the Rethinking Pain service. We argue that this can be achieved through greater use of the voluntary and community sector, in partnership with the clinical sector. This aligns with growing evidence that people living with chronic pain do better when receiving pain care that is socially connected, meaningful within socio-cultural contexts and aligned with the principles of health promotion (salutogenesis).
Our article describes Rethinking Pain, a voluntary and community sector service for people living with pain in Bradford District and Craven. Our pain research team at Leeds Beckett are proud to be the academic partners of Rethinking Pain.
In our article, we reveal the burden of chronic pain in society and how the current landscape of pain services in the UK is not meeting societal needs. We explain that the National Health Service’s (NHS) Long-Term Plan, published in 2019, calls for system change to give people more control of their own health through personalised care that requires professionals to focus on ‘what matters’ to patients. To achieve this requires empowerment of the voluntary and community sector to work alongside the clinical sector. Rethinking Pain is possibly the only voluntary and community sector-led pain service to do this in the U.K., and consequently our article, which discusses the uniqueness and the nuts and bolts of day-to-day operation of Rethinking Pain, is attracting much interest.
We have evaluated Rethinking Pain’s first year of operation. Our team is led by Dr Kate Thompson (pain education), with significant contributions from Dr Ghazala Tabasam (cultural aspects of pain), Ms Ursula Philpot (diet and nutrition) and Professor James Woodall (Theory of Change). Presently, we are preparing manuscripts on (i) the experiences of service users attending Rethinking Pain’s ‘Understanding Pain’ workshops and (ii) a Theory of Change; and we will be presenting our findings at the British Pain Society’s annual conference in June 2024, together with our colleagues from Rethinking Pain led by Kerry Page, Programme Manager. The success of Rethinking Pain, and our partnership work, has been rewarded with funding to continue for at least another year. It is so exciting being involved in such an innovative community-based pain service, at the forefront of NHS system change.
Professor Mark Johnson
Mark Johnson is Professor of Pain and Analgesia. Mark is an international expert on the science of pain and its management and the world leader on transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS). He has published over 300 peer reviewed articles.
