Your Pain Clinic Appointment

You have been referred to the Pain Clinic because your pain is interfering with your quality of life and your ability to function effectively.  Pain that persists can be distressing and disabling. 

Most of the interventions we offer will help about one third of patients and will reduce the intensity of pain but not take it away.  Response to treatment varies from person to person, even if they seem to have the same symptoms. 
Your pain specialist will make an assessment of you and of your pain and decide which treatment(s) might be helpful in your case.

Injections may help some individuals but they often only have a limited effect and should be part of a multidisciplinary (joined up) management programme. A decision on an injection will only be made after a full discussion with the patient if it is considered appropriate.

With support, many patients can start to exercise, engage with hobbies and resume work (full or part-time). We want to help people move forward and for this reason it is unhelpful for us to disable our patients by saying that they are unfit to work.

Our Pain Service works to support you and your GP to manage your pain.  The treatments we offer are familiar to your GP and your GP will be experienced in managing day-to-day queries about your pain treatment. 

Your pain specialist may make a pain treatment plan for you and your GP to follow together. Your GP will be able to deal with queries and if you have a problem with medication you can also discuss this with your pharmacist

Treatments we offer include:

• Medication review
• TENS
• 1 Acupuncture course
• Injections as part of a multidisciplinary approach to pain management
• Stimulation techniques
• Pain Management Programme (PMP) courses are an internationally used approach to the rehabilitation of people with chronic pain conditions. They include specialist guidance about mobility and exercise, following a detailed assessment.
• Back Pack is group programme specifically for people with recurring episodes of back pain.
• Self-Management Programme (SMP). These courses are led by one of the specialist healthcare professional and a Lay Tutor, who is someone who has benefited from one of our courses as a patient and has gone on to train in the delivery of the courses. These SMP courses do not include guidance around exercise, and participants will usually have some form of exercise which they are already involved in, or which they could re-start at a low level themselves during the course.
• Sleep course for people with pain-related insomnia
• Individuals one-to-one sessions for a particular reasons. Individual work is usually a stepping-stone towards attending a program.