Airing Pain #147: Person-Centred Care

This episode of Airing Pain focuses on person-centred care. Person-centred care is based on the individual rather than on a generic group of patients.  

In this episode: 

• Vicky Sandy-Davis, Lead Nurse of Independent Health and Social Care, talks about the importance of recognizing the value of person-centred care, specifically for people with intellectual or learning disabilities 

• Ian Taverner and Sarah Harrisson discuss the importance of involving people living with chronic pain in research studies so that researchers can be guided by those with experience of chronic pain 

• Professor Nicole Tang and Jenna Gillett share findings from their research on mental defeat.  For people living with chronic pain, mental defeat can be a way of characterizing how the pain impacts a person’s perceived loss of autonomy which can lead to a loss of identity when experiencing repeated episodes of pain.  

Contributors: 

Vicky Sandy-Davis, Lead Nurse for Independent Health and Social Care, West Midlands 

Ian Taverner, Chair of the Public Advisory Group of CRIISP (Consortium to Research Individual, Interpersonal and Social Influences in Pain) 

Sarah Harrisson, Research Associate in Applied Health Research at Keele University, Specialist Pain Physiotherapist with the IMPACT Community Pain Service (Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) in Stoke-on-Trent 

Professor Nicole Tang, Director of the Warwick Sleep and Pain Laboratory, Academic Co-Lead for the Warwick Health Global Research Priority Mental Health Theme

Jenna Gillett, PhD student at Warwick University and Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Buckingham. 

Thanks

The interviews were recorded at the British Pain Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting, 2024. 

Time Stamps: 

[00:00] Introduction by Paul Evans
Overview of Pain Concern’s work and the British Pain Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting 2024 as the context for the interviews.

[00:45] Professor Nicole Tang on Mental Defeat
She explains how chronic pain impacts identity and self-perception, drawing analogies from animal behavior. Discusses mental defeat as a predictor of distress and its relationship with suicidal behavior.

[02:27] Vicky Sandy-Davis on Person-Centred Care
She explains diagnostic overshadowing and highlights the importance of personalized care for individuals with learning disabilities and chronic pain. Shares challenges in supporting offenders with learning disabilities in the criminal justice system.

[16:26] Ian Taverner and Sarah Harrisson discuss Patient Involvement in Research
They discuss the value of integrating lived experiences of chronic pain sufferers into research.
They highlight the gap in representation of individuals with severe pain in public involvement initiatives. and advocate for meaningful participation of patients in shaping research.

[19:25] Nicole Tang and Jenna Gillett discuss the Warwick Mental Defeat Study and how mental defeat impacts pain management and affects levels of suicidal behaviour.

[30:00] Nicole Tang and Jenna Gillett discuss challenges in communicating research outcomes – the importance of making tools and findings accessible to clinicians and researchers. They talk about plans to share the mental defeat questionnaire for broader use in healthcare.

Additional Resources: 

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