In this episode Maxi and Andrew continue to delve further into chronic pain management with 3 special guests. Our guests today are University of Alberta PT professor Dr. Geoff Bostick and clinicians Janet Holly and Murray Kowalczyk.
We cover the following in this episode:
- What is pain science education?
- Which patients should we giving pain science education to?
- A useful analogy to use with patients in helping patients reflect on their personal story
- What are the core components that make up pain science education?
- Why we need to be reflective as therapists in evaluating our interactions with patients?
- What’s the evidence for the effectiveness of pain science education?
- Why should pain science education should be a part of every therapist’s toolkit?
PS We apologize for the background scratching sound in this episode!
Interested to learn more about chronic pain management? Check out the Chronic Pain Toolkit created by Physiotherapy Alberta? You can access it here: http://bit.ly/painresources
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Guest Bios
Geoff Bostick is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta (U of A) in the Department of Physical Therapy (PT). He teaches primarily in the orthopaedic portion of the program, but incorporates as much pain education as possible into other courses in the MScPT program. His research interests include neuropathic pain in OA, cognitive factors in chronic pain and various teaching-related initiatives. He offers a small PT pain program in conjunction with the U of A Multidisciplinary Pain Centre and is the current Chair of the Pain Science Division.
Murray Kowalczyk completed his physiotherapy degree from the University of Alberta, after getting his kinesiology degree from the University of Calgary (he thinks both cities are equally lovely). He continues to work in Edmonton at an interdisciplinary private practice focusing on active rehabilitation and giving patients the tools to manage their own symptoms. Murray particularly enjoys teaching patients (both of Murray’s parents were teachers…), and showing his patients that they are not broken nor as frail as they often have come to believe!
Janet Holly is a Senior Physiotherapist at the Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre with 27 years clinical experience and is also a Clinical Investigator at the Ottawa Health Research Institute – Clinical Epidemiology Program. She is a clinical specialist in pain sciences and is the Communication Liaison with the Pain Sciences Division. She participated in the development of the chronic pain toolkit published by Physiotherapy Alberta. Learn more about Janet Holly by visiting her LinkedIn profile.