In October 2019 a report on chronic pain services and management from a patient and healthcare professional perspective was published. The research has highlighted a number of key insights and themes for how respondents felt that chronic pain services can be improved and made more equitable in the future. Pain is one of the common factors across all MSK conditions, so this is something which ARMA will be following up in the future.
This report describes the results of qualitative interviews with 23 patients and 20 healthcare professionals. All the patients had and MSK condition and had experienced pain for a minimum of 3 months. All the healthcare professionals had responsibility for managing patients with chronic pain.
The report highlighted a number of key insights:
- Living with chronic pain affects all aspects of a patient’s life – it places a huge burden on patients, exacerbated by a lack of clear answers about how best to manage daily life
- Patients often face delays and setbacks when trying to gain access to appropriate treatments and healthcare support services
- GPs also face hurdles at almost every stage of treating and managing chronic pain and are aware that there are inconsistencies that vary from location to location across the country
- Access to specialist pain services is difficult and is inconsistent across the UK
- Overall satisfaction with support for chronic pain is fairly poor and patients have mixed experiences of services