West of Scotland Pain Group

The West of Scotland Pain Group is a group of professionals from various clinical backgrounds working in Pain Management who hold evening meetings monthly throughout the Winter with the aim of advancing knowledge about chronic pain. The SNRPMP team were asked to talk at the January meeting to provide an update of the service. Dr Rachel Atherton, the psychology lead of the service gave an overview of the background to the service and updated on referral patterns and other clinical news which led to some interesting discussion following the presentation.

Gillian Ward, one of the occupational therapists from the service gave an update on the prep clinic which has been developed to provide support to individuals who have been assessed and may have some goals to work on to allow them to attend the three week phase of the programme. She also presented on the role of occupational therapy within the service, in particular, some of the activity sessions within the programme and introducing the concept of the balance box. The balance box is something which the occupational therapists within the SNRPMP developed which contains items to represent strategies which people may use in order to achieve consistent levels of activity which is meaningful to them in life.