Pain Management Clinics

Pain Management Clinics are specialized clinics for the treatment of all forms of chronic pain including arthritis. Pain clinics take a multi-disciplinary approach to the treatment of pain and various options may be considered including nerve blocks, analgesics and psychological therapy. You will need to be referred by your GP. Your pain will be assessed and a treatment plan discussed with you; the plan will be sent to your general practitioner or to your referring consultant.

The aims of pain clinics are to reduce your level of pain, to restore your functioning and to improve your sense of well being. Pain clinics appear to be a reasonably effective form of treatment with over half the participants at least receiving temporary relief or better. Other Practitioners Survey participants saw many different kinds of physicians in addition to the ones already discussed, but they saw some of them too infrequently for them to be rated. We felt we needed participants' comments on at least twenty practitioners in any given specialty to be able to rate that field. The list of doctors who were seen too infrequently to be rated includes anesthesiologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, emergency-room doctors, endocrinologists, gastroenterologists, general surgeons, hematologists, obstetrician/gynecologists, oncologists, ophthalmolo¬gists, otolaryngologists, pediatricians, plastic surgeons, radiologists, and urologists.

When my family doctor first diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis,' a forty-seven-year-old Florida housewife wrote, 'he told me to go home, take aspirin until my ears ring, and come back next year. When you feel frightened and awful, that's not very comforting.'