Service user empowerment is the idea that service users can get more control and responsibility over their health and healthcare decisions when provided with the education, skills and confidence necessary to have an active role in their own care and be able to make informed decisions, helping them become partners in the healthcare process. For…
Author: painmanagementprogramme
‘Explaining Pain Series’: The Workplace
In previous blogs, we have discussed the idea of explaining your chronic pain to family and friends, and to children. People experiencing chronic pain can struggle to explain their pain experience and needs to others in their life. This blog is focused on explaining pain to employers, by giving you things to consider when discussing…
‘Explaining Pain Series’: Children
As mentioned in the previous blog, chronic pain can have a widespread impact on a person’s life and the lives of those around them. Many who experience chronic pain can struggle to explain their pain experience to others. This is the second blog in a series focused on helping people to better explain their pain…
‘Explaining Pain Series’: Adult Family & Friends
Chronic pain can have a widespread impact on a person’s life and the lives of those around them. Many people who experience chronic pain struggle to explain their pain experience to those closest to them. This is the first blog in a series focused on helping people to better explain their pain and needs to…
Difficulty Sleeping? Further Tips to Help with Your Sleep
Everyone would like good quality sleep due to its importance to our health and well-being, but this isn’t always possible for everyone. Most people with chronic pain know how difficult it can be to get a decent night’s sleep and some even report that their pain appears to increase following a night of poor sleep,…
Maintaining Wellbeing over Winter
If you are having trouble dealing with worries about the coming months, you are not alone. Winter can be a challenging time, with darker and colder days, and this year we are approaching it with an added challenge of COVID-19 and the uncertainty around what this will bring. It is helpful to remember that feelings…
Challenges of Coming Out of Lockdown
As lockdown starts to ease people may be experiencing some mixed feelings – there may be relief and excitement about getting back to activities and seeing friends and family again, but there may also be some apprehension and anxiety surrounding this. Anxiety about this is completely understandable. Just as we had to readjust at the…
‘The Ripple Effect’ Series: Future Plans and Goals
This blog series is looking at the effect that chronic pain can have on someone’s life, using the metaphor of a ‘ripple effect’ displaying a pebble across water. When the pebble breaks the surface we can think of the ripples as the impact this has on an individual’s life, spreading wider and wider. This blog…
Coping with Chronic Pain in Lockdown
This blog will explore how we might cope with the changes caused by COVID-19, particularly if you have chronic pain and are experiencing higher distress levels than is typically normal for you. While it is primarily for people who have chronic pain, the tips below are also relevant for everybody who is staying at home…
‘The Ripple Effect’ Series: Physical Wellbeing
In this third instalment of our ‘Ripple Effect’ series, we will focus on how physical wellbeing can be impacted by chronic pain. In our previous blog we looked at emotional wellbeing, which is closely linked to our physical wellbeing. The difference being that physical wellbeing is more about how we function physically on a daily…
Pain Management Programme 