The Gloucestershire Chronic Pain Service is a well-established service for people who have longstanding pain. Because pain impacts on many aspects of people’s lives, pain management is a multi-disciplinary sub-specialty.  In the last year the Chronic Pain team had around 6800 patient visits in outpatient clinics and the Pain Management Programme.

In addition, the Acute Pain Service (based within the Department of Anaesthesia) deals primarily with pain after surgery in the acute hospitals.

The term "chronic pain" refers to pain that is persisting beyond the time normally expected for healing following injury or disease.  This is often defined as more than six months, though this is arbitrary and often pain and the changes associated with it can become chronic much earlier.  Chronic pain impacts on many areas of a person's life, and cannot always be resolved by medical or physical treatments.

There are two aspects to the Chronic Pain Service: the Pain Clinic, and Pain Self Management.

 

The Pain Clinic Team offer medical consultations for pain, and clinics are run in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury, Stroud and the Forest of Dean.  A wide range of treatment and management options are available, including both invasive and non-invasive procedures, and advice on medication. 

After assessment by the Consultants in Pain Management, the expertise of a number of disciplines is brought together in an effort to provide the maximum benefit to each patient.  This uses a wide range of therapeutic approaches both to attempt to relieve the pain and to equip and empower patients to manage their pain.

On a linked page we have posted some advice on referral to the Pain Clinic.  Referral for Acupuncture and individual Psychology are made within the clinic after medical assessment of the patients. We are unable to accept direct referrals for these services.  For certain conditions, we are able to accept direct referrals to the Pain Self Management Programme.

We are also actively involved in training doctors and others in Pain Management: we are one of the centres approved by the Royal College of Anaesthetists for specialist Advanced Training of future Pain Consultants and the Advanced Pain Trainee works alongside the Consultants in the Pain Service.  We regularly provide placements for trainees from other professional groups.

 

Pain Self Management helps people develop their strategies to manage pain.  The multidisciplinary team includes nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and psychologists, who are based in Gloucester and Cheltenham.  The aim of Pain Self Management is to improve the quality of life, and we use cognitive behaviour therapy and mindfulness approaches to do this.