Airing Pain 58: The Pain Toolkit

Learning to live with it: a toolkit for self-management

This edition has been funded by a grant from the Scottish Government.

‘You have to learn to live with it.’ Pete Moore’s GP told him after running out of treatment options for chronic pain. From his own experiences of learning how to live with pain, Pete Moore developed the Pain Toolkit (first a leaflet and now a multimedia web resource) to help kick-start other people’s efforts in self-management.

Producer Paul Evans caught up with Pete at the British Pain Society’s Manchester meeting for an in-depth introduction to the Pain Toolkit. Rather than relying on an exclusively medical model of endless prescriptions, the Toolkit represents an educational approach giving people strategies for self-management. It’s an approach that goes beyond just treating the pain and looks at mood, sleep, exercise and relationships.

Pete describes how the Pain Toolkit uses images and humour to make self-management messages – gathering a supportive team of healthcare professionals, pacing and relaxation – hit home and the ways in which technology can help get the message out there.

Issues covered in this programme include: Web resource, alternative therapies, pacing, relaxation therapy, educating health professionals, GP, social media, depression, family, relationships, work, pain toolkit, stretching, exercise, gardening and workshops.

Contributors:

• Pete Moore, Creator of the Pain Toolkit.

More information:

• The Pain Toolkit.