Sadly the lighting doesn’t do justice to Dave’s shirt. As usual just the sight of his shirt (pants, glasses and shoes) really sparks you up and feel energized for the final day of EP3. Today was much more patient/ treatment orientated – bringing together the science and taking it to the battlefront. I think the 2 key messages are: Find out how to use The Protectometer – the new workbook that Lorimer and Dave have put together combining all the elements of Explain Pain into a short easy to understand book. Secondly applying important education skills to bring into your day to day practices will make you a more effective pain practitioner.
Some pearls of wisdom from Dave:
Education as therapy is usually underestimated, underdone or not done. Talking can do more good (be careful of your language) than multiple hands on treatments.
Be able to think in an emergent way as well as a linear way- pain is an emergent output with many parts of the brain contributing simultaneously to the output- there can never be a singular blame or singular treatment.
KEPIs (it could have been about writing a CV for a job)- in fact it stands for Key Educational Performance Indicators used in education academia. This was brilliant. If you do an Explain Pain course just to hear Dave speak on educating it’s worth it alone. There’s tons of (as he calls them) nuggets of information but a couple which you will all relate to are:
- If altered beliefs and actions got you there ( pain), then altered beliefs and actions can get you out of there ( pain).
- Another way to think of it is bioplasticity- bioplasticity led to your pain problems but eqully bioplasticity can get you out.
- Its all about balance of danger and safety
Have a pain knowledge storybook to help translate these seemingly complex body responses (involving the immune system, endocrine system, motor system, sympathetic nervous system,plus a whole lot more) into an understandable and relatable story for the patient.
Be a good listener.
Now one of the recurring themes through the weekend was the importance of good sleep with effective pain management and I certainly have been running a bit on empty in the sleep department with all my furious blogging and tweeting so am packing away the computer and trying to get ready for the last day of this PAIN extravaganza that I have been on. Pain Adelaide is on tomorrow and there will be more pain stars and more pearls of wisdom to look forward to. In the meantime get on and buy the Protectometer app and have some fun. It is only available for Ipads atm
