Tracy Harrison
Getting Pain Management Right
Updated: Jan 15

All of us will feel pain at some point in our lives. When it comes time for you or a loved one to have a surgical procedure or experience an acute medical condition, you hope for a provider who will be compassionate and thoughtful for comfort and safety, one who will have an appropriate plan for pain management. Improved pain management will allow one to heal more quickly, return to normal functioning faster, and decrease medical complications, and has a number of additional benefits.
Rather than leaving the pain management plan to chance, we strive to put relevant and actionable recommendations into the hands of every medical provider. Pain management can be overwhelming but every medical provider has the right to straightforward information that can be applied practically in a busy environment. We know that pain management education in medical school is suboptimal and that providers tend to follow the trend of the hospital culture regarding pain, for better or worse. At PreEmptPain, we believe that a systematic approach to pain management is the gold standard. The benefits of a systematic approach includes:
1-understanding the factors that contribute to pain and symptoms
2-understanding the approach based on the expected pain intensity for a given
condition
3-knowing what types of pain and symptoms are associated with particular conditions
and making a proactive plan to treat them
4-improved communication with providers when you aide the patient in
accomplishing functional goals (physical therapy, ambulation, reconditioning)
5-improved communication with patients; improved ability to converse with
patients about pain
Stay tuned to this site for more useful information that you can apply to your practice today. We're preparing to unveil a clinical decision tool to be used at the bedside to guide pain management decisions.