Pain Education & Management
Canberra Injury Management Centre
Understanding your pain and how it relates to your specific condition is often complicated, frustrating and exhausting, and the old saying of ‘no pain, no gain’ in many cases does not apply.
The Canberra Injury Management Centre is one of Canberra’s most experienced multidisciplinary teams, who provide expert advice and effective treatment for a range of chronic and complex pain conditions.
Our pain management aims to deliver a new slogan for pain management
“Know pain, know gain, know knowledge is power!“
In 2020 International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) revised the definition of pain…
‘An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage’
But what does this mean? The how and why we experience pain is complex scenario and perhaps best summed up by stating that pain is created by the interaction of multiple factors in an individuals current situation that determines whether their system concludes it needs to alter its behaviour for protective reasons.
A lot of the time these reasons are clear, such as following a sprained ankle where you experience pain in order to tell you not to walk on it… initially. However, sometimes the reason for pain can be less clear, such as the ankle that should have healed after 3 months of appropriate protection, but still is painful, or the forearm pain that happens every time I look at a keyboard.
Because there are so many factors that affect your pain, there are many things you can be empowered to do to change your pain.
Being able to recognise your pain is more than just a physical sensation is the first step in pain management. Understanding that sleep, exercise, your general health, attitudes, belief, mood, your environment and the people around you can also influence your experience of pain is the next big step. Opening this door unlocks a huge number of ways to manage and treat your pain successfully day to day and throughout your life.
Our team provides a holistic approach to pain management to help you address as many factors that may be influencing your pain as possible.
These may include:
- Physical dysfunction or maladaptive movement behaviours
- Psychosocial factors (including work and home stressors)
- Lifestyle or ergonomic factors that may be contributing to your pain
Once we have identified what factors can be addressed we can effectively provide:
- Pain education
- Corrective exercises (either prescribed and/or supervised) and
- Strategies to decrease the influence of psychosocial, lifestyle and ergonomic factors on your pain
Services available include:
- Physiotherapy
- Psychology
- Exercise physiology
- Hydrotherapy