PainExplained.ca - Getting Answers for Pain

 NEWS RELEASE

 For Immediate Release

Toronto, November 3, 2008 – Canadian doctors, patients, researchers, and other healthcare professionals are condemning the barriers that prevent Canadians from accessing proper and timely pain care.  As part of this year’s National Pain Awareness Week (November 2 – 8, 2008), the Painexplained.ca Campaign is targeting key reasons why Canadians are suffering needlessly or excessively from acute and chronic pain.

“Our concern is this: how many of the six million Canadians out there in moderate-to-severe chronic pain are suffering unnecessarily?” said Dr. Barry Sessle, President of the Canadian Pain Society and Campaign Co-Founder. “We know that too many are not getting the timely care they desperately want and deserve. That’s why we are targeting key barriers that cause greatest delay and distress to Canadian pain patients.”

“When you or someone you love is suffering, every minute spent waiting for proper pain care feels like a travesty,” said Lynn Cooper, President of the Canadian Pain Coalition and Campaign Founding Member. “It is unacceptable that so many of us are living with pain that could have been prevented, cured, or reduced with proper and timely care.”

Five key issues have been identified which are exacerbating the struggle of Canadians with untreated or undertreated pain:

1.      Canadian Healthcare Professionals are insufficiently trained about pain:  A 2007 audit of 41 Canadian undergraduate Healthcare Professional programs revealed that 67% of all healthcare programs surveyed could not identify specific training in the mechanisms, diagnosis or treatment of pain.  The same study revealed that Canadian veterinary students get five times as much specific training about pain as medical students. (Source:  Watt-Watson/McGillion/Hunter, 2007)

2.      Pain Patients are struggling to find doctors able and willing to help: Over 14% of chronic pain patients report being refused care by a doctor or having their care terminated because of their pain. Many new physicians are refusing to take on these patients, leaving them with nowhere to turn.      15% of chronic pain patients also report being discouraged from receiving a pain treatment necessary to relieve their pain. (Source: Nanos Research, Oct 2008)

3.      Doctors feel reluctant to prescribe needed pain medications: Best practice pain management often calls for the use of opioids and other powerful medications. Historic regulatory actions against pain doctors have put a ‘chill’ on general willingness to prescribe pain medications, making it harder for legitimate pain patients to access proper pain care.

4.      Wait times for effective pain care are unacceptable:  An audit of wait times confirmed that some Canadians must wait as long as five years to receive care from an academic pain clinic.  The risk of suicide while waiting for care is double that of the general population. (Source: CPS).

5.      Out-dated attitudes make us reluctant to ‘speak up’ for proper pain care: Many Canadians mistakenly feel that pain is a normal part of their disease or the healing and aging processes, and therefore don’t speak up to get treatment. But over time, the chemical and structural changes in the nervous system of those suffering unrelieved pain actually causes our nerve pathways to become ‘sensitized’. This makes the pain more difficult (if not impossible) to treat effectively.

“New knowledge and best practices now exist that can help prevent, manage and even cure chronic pain,” Dr. James Henry, Scientific Director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research and Care at McMaster University, and President of the Canadian Pain Foundation. “But patients aren’t yet benefiting from this knowledge, in part because of these systemic barriers. It’s time we did better for Canadians living with pain.”

Painexplained.ca is a new campaign supported by the Canadian Pain Society, Canadian Pain Coalition, the Canadian Pain Foundation and other partner groups, companies and individuals.  The campaign seeks to raise awareness and promote better prevention and management of all types of pain in Canada.

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For more information

Ingrid Thompson, Campaign Coordinator

647-428-7133 or Ingrid@painexplained.ca