This course is available as a standalone CE course or as an elective for our new Advanced Practice Certification.

Traditional pain models depict pain stages (acute, sub-acute and chronic) as a timeline from the originating event. Modern pain science shows this model is flawed. Powerful drivers on chronic pain are known to set in within hours/days of an initiating event that set patients up early for “chronic pain.” This includes sensitization of the nervous system, intensity and duration of acute pain, fear-avoidance and more.

This presentation will showcase how a subgroup of “acute” and “sub-acute” patients already present with “chronic” pain and how to alter their trajectory towards chronic pain. From a pain perspective, this may be how acute care therapist and their impact on people with pain should be seen. What if an acute care therapist can start the process in acute care? What if the acute care therapist plants seeds of change early on in acute care – how can that potentially impact a patient’s clinical presentation on the outpatient side? There has been an explosion of pain science, especially in therapy, and acute care therapists are perfect to engage patients in pain neuroscience education, build therapeutic alliance, increase trust in rehabilitation, foster healthier beliefs about pain, etc.

Course Outcomes