Persistent Pain Programme

Persistent Pain Programme is a free self-management course for people who live with day-to-day persistent pain.

Most people with pain tend to do more on good days and less on bad ones.  They do this because they try to keep up with others, their family or work colleagues.

Pacing your daily activities is the key to managing pain and not continuing with an activity until your pain starts or increases.  People who come on the course learn about pacing and other easy to learn pain self-management skills.

What is the Persistent Pain Programme about?

Persistent Pain Programme is a free self-management course for people who live with day-to-day persistent pain. You will:

• Meet and share experiences with others in a similar situation
• Overcome common misconceptions, fears and beliefs about pain such as ‘exercise equals harm’
• Understand how to pace your daily activities
• Learn stretching and exercising techniques – where to begin and why and how it can reduce your pain
• Understand action planning and goal setting
• Learn problem solving skills for when things sometimes go wrong
• Keep a pain diary and track your progress
• Learn about medication management
• Look at healthy eating plans
• Learn simple relaxation skills
• Learn how to improve communication skills with your friends, family, work colleagues and not forgetting your health care professionals
• Consider how to deal with setbacks if, or, when they happen

Who can take part?

Any adult with persistent pain can attend. This could include muscular pain, nerve pain, joint pain and other medical conditions which cause pain.

Who runs the courses?

The Persistent Pain Programme is delivered by trained and accredited tutors, living with persistent pain themselves, but who have become good at pain self-management.

How can it help you?

By taking part in a Persistent Pain Programme, you will:

• Improve your quality of life and put you back in the driving seat
• Reduce pain and tiredness
• Be able to do more without increasing the pain
• Learn that becoming and keeping active doesn’t equal harm
• Reduce feelings of isolation and depression
• Increase your confidence and self esteem
• Improve relationships with family, friends and work colleagues
• Reduce visits to health care professionals and time off work

Interested in participating? Please call the Expert Patients Programme on Freephone 0800 988 5550 or contact us by email today.

What course participants say

Helen - Taunton

“When I recently had an evaluation with the clinical psychologist, she said that I seem to have sorted out these problems myself – and this is as a direct result of the course.”

I was diagnosed with degenerative disease of the spine 6 years ago, in May 2004. I think I originally hurt my spine doing several things – one was lifting a patient at the hospital where I worked, even though I did follow the correct procedure. From then on, my back slowly went downhill, so I went to see a chiropractor who said it was a muscular problem. By July, I was in complete agony. I had an MRI scan which revealed I had cracked a disc and it had prolapsed out of the spinal column. The surgeon suggested I had an epidural. By this time, my nerve pain was excruciating. It was horrendous. I had the epidural in October and this was followed by 3 weeks of semi-relief. I then went back to see the surgeon and he wanted me to have a spinal nerve block which I had in March of the following year. This didn’t provide any relief at all. I went back to the surgeon again, and this time he said I needed a decompression. I was in agony after this and it took me weeks to walk again; it provided no relief at all.

More on Helen's story

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