Pain Management in Primary Care: Tools, Resources and Guidance

This month, MORPh Clinical Director Helen Liddell will be presenting a webinar on Pain Management in Primary Care. Helen is Chief Pharmacist for a community provider of pain and rheumatology services. She is also HEE Ambassador for Clinical Pharmacists in General Practice. As well as Helen’s wealth of experience, in her webinar she will be drawing on a variety of tools, resources and guidance. Below, you will find links to the resources Helen will be referring to in her webinar. For further information on the topic, you can also view Helen’s Bitesize Learning video on Pain Management.

Pain Management: Opiates and Gabapentinoids – safety issues and deprescribing

Questions are often raised around opiates and gabapentinoids in our peer-to-peer support groups on Telegram. In particular, people want to know about safety issues and deprescribing. This will be a focus for Helen in her webinar. When asked for the best resource for information on opioids, Helen often refers people to the Opioids Aware website. Part of the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, the website has a wealth of information on a variety of topics relating to good practice in opioid medicine.

Pain Management: Chronic pain and the NICE Guidance

When it comes to assessing and managing chronic pain, Helen recommends turning to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance that was published in April 2021. This guidance covers assessing all chronic pain (chronic primary pain, chronic secondary pain, or both) and managing chronic primary pain in people aged 16 years and over. Chronic primary pain is pain with no clear underlying cause, or pain (or its impact) that is out of proportion to any observable injury or disease.

Understanding Pain

To work with chronic pain patients, it is important to understand pain. What pain is, where it comes from, what it means, how it develops and the underlying cause – which may be more complicated than you think. Helen suggests watching a series of short videos ranging from under 2 minutes to 18 minutes in length. Each one offers an innovative explanation of pain, touching on why opioids may not be the right solution and pointing us towards more natural methods of pain management.

• Professor Mick Thacker TEDx talk on understanding pain (18 minutes)
• Understanding pain in less than 5 minutes and what to do about it (5 minutes)
• Understanding Pain: Brainman stops his opioids (under 2 minutes)

Pain Management

Chronic or persistent pain is defined as pain lasting over three months despite treatment or medication. Living with chronic pain can be debilitating and many people turn to painkillers including opioids. This can lead to both dependency and addiction. The below resources focus on the management of long term pain and explain the consequences of addiction.

• Patient Information Leaflets – The Faculty of Pain Medicine has a selection of leaflets aimed at patients. These explain certain prescriptions and cover other useful topics such as driving and pain.
• Live well with pain – This is a resource for GPs and pain specialists that was developed for clinicians, by clinicians. It has a wealth of resources and techniques for anybody looking to increase their confidence in dealing with patients living with chronic pain.
• Hard hitting painkiller addiction stories – a website that shows why painkillers may not work, and faces up to the possibility of addiction.
• Pain Toolkit – This is a set of tools for both people who live with persistent pain and the healthcare professionals supporting them. It is also available as an app.
• Exercises for Arthritis – If you are working with arthritis patients, this is a useful resource. Read a variety of articles, request information booklets and find out how to get help.

We understand the importance of information and resources on page management. That’s why we regularly hold webinars on the topic. Do head to our training area to see what’s on and book onto the most convenient pain webinar for you. Pre-recorded webinars are also available on our Educational Platform. Get in touch to find out more.