UW Medicine 13th Annual John D. Loeser Pain Conference Chronic Pain from Disease, Injury and Other Life Traumas Identification, Prevention, and Management 2020

Thursday, November 12, 2020, 7:30 AM – 5:30 PM, Online, Online, WA

Chronic pain does not solely arise from initiating biomedical causes of disease or physical injury; high impact chronic pain is both amplified and perpetuated by psychological and socially traumatic events.  Among current health and social traumas, the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated long-standing difficulties accessing already scarce multidisciplinary pain care, threatening vulnerable communities and socially isolating and economically disrupting the lives of our patients with chronic pain.

The 13th Annual John D. Loeser Pain Conference will this year be presented as an online live course, focusing on the biopsychosocial mechanisms that increase risk of initial acute painful injury transitioning into chronic pain, and emphasizing identification and multidisciplinary approaches to prevention and treatment. Faculty will emphasize vulnerable populations, review clinician-led approaches to patient pain education, propose why opioids may interfere with improvement, and how multidisciplinary care delivered via telehealth offers opportunities to increase access to effective chronic pain management.

1. Recognize how personal, racial, and historical trauma contributes to the development of chronic pain.
2. Describe biopsychosocial mechanisms of pain chronification.
3. Identify and intervene on behalf of vulnerable populations likely to develop chronic pain.
4. Delineate strategies that prevent and reduce the transition from acute to chronic pain.
5. Apply principles of pain neurophysiology education in your routine practice.
6. Describe how opioids can worsen pain complicated by psychosocial trauma .
7. More successfully access behavioral and physical therapy providers with trauma-based care expertise.
8. Implement telehealth approaches to increase access to multidisciplinary pain care.