Why is pain so hard to treat effectively?

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Because pain is an experience we feel throughout our entire body, mind and soul it can be very challenging to treat effectively. There are many factors that can change how you feel pain ranging from culture to past experiences. Currently, in health care, many clinicians continue to treat pain as if it is directly related to the injury, but the evidence is very clear that this is not true. This is why we need to treat the whole person who is living with pain. When pain is treated with an emphasis on the person and not just the injury it can affect the results for you personally, financially and functionally.

It is believed that lack of pain education formally amongst clinicians contributes to the problem of optimal pain management. This is particularly true if the focus is only on your injury or pathology. Working with patients I include pain education as part of the treatment because when you better understand the complexity of pain you can have more control over it. I endeavour to teach more formal pain education workshops, with education credits from their associated governing bodies, to clinicians around Alberta.