Richmond is heading to Cork with the CRPS UK crew
I am looking forward to the CRPS Conference this week for a number of reasons. The primary reason and purpose is to connect with others who want to drive social change in terms of pain. I will be representing UP of course, and encouraging people to join our community as we forge forward with enterprising work to change the way society thinks about and addresses pain.
Pain is embedded within society and hence is a social problem. You could also call pain a public health problem, with both terms more accurately defining the nature of the issue. Pain is not a medical problem.
Conferences for particular conditions are often dominated by clinicians and scientists. Whilst these groups must be there, so should patient representative organisations, policy makers, MPs and others who must play a role in the much needed change. The best example of this in action was the recent SIP conference in Malta when every group was present to discuss how we can move onward and the next steps.
Sadly, I have neither seen nor heard any positive reverberations in the UK from this key meeting. All the work is going on in Europe. I hope the UK will wake up. I will certainly keep nudging until we do together with my friend and co-conspirator, Pete Moore. Coming soon, we have some short videos of recent conversations we had about pain ~ sign up to the UP website and you’ll receive notification.
The CRPS conference will be a chance to talk to researchers about their new findings. Naturally I can read their papers, but the chance to chat and connect is vital. We need much more interaction between those in healthcare and those doing the research. The science must be distilled into something that can be consumed by all, which is another of UP’s purposes.
I will be tweeting from Cork, so keep an eye on Twitter @painphysio and follow me if you don’t already. Blogs will appear here and on my ow site: Specialist Pain Physio and on Facebook
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