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Practice Leadership Podcast: Bet on Chronic Pain

October 16, 2018 • Pain Science • Larry Benz

Welcome back for a BRAND NEW Season of the EIM Practice Leadership Podcast!! Dr. Larry Benz is very excited for season 2 of this show, bringing you a series of episodes on the topic of “big bets.” Bets that we need to make in physical therapy. Larry discussed these bets at the recent Ascend Conference, from WebPT, in Phoenix.

Our first bet is the bet on chronic pain. We know that chronic pain (pain longer than six months) is a pandemic. Statistically, an extremely high percentage of the population deals with chronic pain. Larry discusses some staggering statistics about chronic pain and opioid exposure, facts surrounding a patient’s behavior when dealing with chronic pain, and what we need to do about it in order to really help our patients succeed.

Also, the EIM Practice Leadership Podcast will be moving to Tuesdays, twice a month! We’ll be airing EIM Inside Leadership on the first Tuesday of every month and then continuing with two more episodes of EIM Practice Leadership on other Tuesdays of that month!

Thank you very much for listening! We welcome your thoughts and comments and we hope you enjoy this episode!

 

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Larry Benz

Dr. Larry Benz, DPT, OCS, MBA, MAPP, is the Executive Chairman of Confluent Health. He is nationally recognized for his expertise in private practice physical therapy and occupational medicine. Dr. Benz’s current areas of interest include conducting research and integrating empathy, compassion, and positive psychology interventions within physical therapy. He released a book on September...

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Aaron Gani

Commented • October 23, 2018

Thanks Larry for the leadership you are providing in this critically important area. It's hard to find someone whose family & friends are untouched by the pain and opioid epidemic. Your thoughtful discussion of the stunning statistics and arguments for revisions in payment policy are powerful. BehaVR is honored to be your partner in creating Pain Neuroscience Virtual Reality programs to help Physical Therapists make an impact and join you making this big bet on chronic pain.

Keith Roper

Commented • October 21, 2018

Larry, Thanks for discussing this very timely and important topic. The chronic pain pandemic and opioid crisis highlight a massive failure of our system to manage pain, including MSK issues, properly and provides a huge opportunity for providers with interest and ability to service this issue. I share your concern that we may contribute to the problem more than help if we continue to over-treat or use inappropriate management strategies, ie. treat them like an acute pt. Chasing the pain and focusing on reducing their "number" rather than educating our patients, focusing on function and empowerment is a recipe for failure and frustration. While there is good evidence that early, guideline adherent PT reduces healthcare utilization and improves Pt outcomes, there is still far too much non-guideline adherent, passive, tissue based therapy being provided. IMHO, we need to reduce our reliance on passive interventions, take a hard look at our own beliefs and knowledge regarding pain, and do some serious work on improving communication skills, updating our pain science knowledge, improving our awareness of and ability to identify psycho-social factors, and increasing our comfort level with providing care that is psychologically informed. We must learn to be comfortable with this patient population because they are a growing % of our case-load, and we need to get the pendulum swinging back in the direction of inter-professional management. It is beneficial to the patient and helpful to us to develop awareness of the roles other professions have in managing persistent pain and in developing relationships within our own medical communities that we may assist our patients in getting the care they need and deserve. Finally, a plea to our educators and institutions of learning - UPDATE YOUR CURRICULUM, take a hard look at what you are teaching our PT students! Make sure we are graduating PTs who have an understanding of pain, its complexity and contextuality, and who have adequate ability to manage this growing patient population.


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