According to recent studies, around 15.5 million individuals suffer from chronic pain in England. This stat covers around 34% of the total population. Among this, 5.5 million of these sufferers cannot take part in daily activities. Still, most of these people are hesitant to visit pain management doctors.
What is Chronic Pain Anyway?
Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts more than 6-months. The pain is constant, and these individuals have been prescribed pain killers that won’t work or directed to seek psychological help. This often leads the patient to think that they are either mentally ill or make up their symptoms.
Probably, this is the main factor that keeps chronic pain patients back out from seeking help from a pain management doctors. Various studies are being performed in this regard. Researchers are trying to understand the connection between emotional and physical pain. And the latest findings suggest that yes, both are connected from the central part of the brain.
Let’s look at a case; Emily suffers from constant back pain. She visited several health care practitioners only to be told off to visit a pain psychologist and take medications. But, that does not help Emily as she feels intimidated to visit a pain psychologist.
She does some local searches on Google for chronic pain management near me but resists. It builds two vicious cycles- physical pain induces different sentiments like depression, anger, loss, and a short temper. When these feelings take a toll, the patient automatically goes into depression due to the constant running of these negative thoughts.
It led the patients to believe that there’s no way out of this chronic pain. Some want a long-term solution, while others pray that the pain diffuses itself without medical care. This happens probably because; they are worried about the cost of surgery or believe they have to live with this pain forever. Some people take ages to visit a pain management doctor, worsening their current condition.
Why Do People Avoid to Seek Help from Pain Management Doctor?
- 30% thinks they can live with the pain
- 29% thinks they don’t have time for a pain management doctor and keep taking painkillers
- 26% are too busy taking care of others, and
- 24% become used to the pain
The expert believes that there are certain barriers to managing such patients adequately. Some barriers are from the doctor’s end, like lack of reimbursement for pain treatment, and at times, it’s the patient’s attitude. If you are looking for knee pain treatment, hip pain treatment, shoulder pain treatment, elbow pain treatment, ankle pain treatment, foot pain treatment, local doctors will be listed in front of you.
If you live and reside in Manchester, we can help!
Barriers to Care!
Society may call individuals’ weak patients’ if they don’t bear the pain. As cliché as it may sound, it is true. Remember the old saying, ‘no pain, no gain,’ probably this is what keeps the individuals from visiting a doctor.
All this is because the people are visiting the wrong doctor. Chronic pain management is treated only by experts, known as pain management doctors. If the patient is visiting a normal health care practitioner, they will give pain killers, and that’s it. These physicians receive no training in chronic pain management. Surgeons are trained to do surgery, orthopaedics are trained to fix joints, and none know how to help a patient with chronic pain.
What Does a Pain Management Doctor do?
Pain management doctors receive special training in treating chronic pain, and thus, they are the people you should visit if you suffer from any pain that lasts more than 6 months.
The whole setup of diagnosing a patient is different for these doctors. First off, they will see the root cause of the pain and its underlying conditions that lead to the pain. For example, back pain can start due to different reasons.
- If you visit your day-to-day health care doctor, they will write up a pain killer with some exercise and send you off without actually determining the real reason. Your back pain can result from poor posture, herniated disc, or arthritis. Each of these conditions has a different line of treatment that only a pain management specialist can diagnose and treat.
- Once the pain management specialist finds the root cause, they will personalize therapy for you based on their expertise and the latest research. Yes, you read that right. These doctors have the right to conduct their trials on individuals who did not find relief from conventional treatments.
- Your pain management doctor will either use non-surgical treatment or interventional one, combined therapies. This combination lessens the need to take medications and eliminates the surgery. Some of this complementary therapy may include; yoga, meditation, acupuncture, exercise, changes in your diet, or lifestyle changes.
- The type of medication your pain management doctor will prescribe includes; pain killers like NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, and anti-depressants. The latter is important because these patients feel intimidated by their pain.
- Pain doctors often use a wide range of non-surgical, interventional treatments – along with complementary therapies – as a way of reducing the amount of medication you need to take or to avoid the need for surgery. These may include massage, a weight loss regimen, acupuncture, exercise, yoga, meditation, physical therapy, dietary changes, or chiropractic care.
The pain management doctor might suggest a pain psychologist as they are trained doctors to help you feel better emotionally.
Phrases like;
- I know you are in pain
- We understand this pain is impacting your lifestyle
- We can help you feel emotionally better along with a pain management doctor.
Doctors and healthcare practitioners should understand that there are gentle methods to authenticate that the patient is in pain. But, like mentioned before, it is not their job to treat chronic pain, and this is where chronic pain management doctors come into action.
OrthoRemedy is not your regular pain management clinic. You can find us on Google by searching for chronic pain management doctors near me and call us to learn more about our services. Our doctors are trained to treat chronic pain. We have helped hundreds of patients find relief from chronic pain.
