Painaustralia says of itself that it is “Australia’s
leading pain advocacy body working to improve the quality of life of people
living with pain, their families and carers, and to minimise the social and
economic burden of pain on individuals and the community”.
On 11 June
2019 it released a copy of The
National Strategic Action Plan for Pain Management having
convinced the Morrison Coalition Government that this plan is the bee knees
when it comes to pain management.
If the
following article is anything to go by it will be tears before bedtime for many
chronic pain suffers as the plan does not contain any mention of actually increasing
the number pain specialists practicing in Australia or of attempting to lower
wait times to see such specialists.
Currently NSW
Health only lists 35
pain management services in the state and most of these are attached to
metropolitan public hospitals.
Instead
people experiencing acute and chronic pain are to be offered 10 Medicare-funded group
services and 10 individual services each calendar year, with access to
telehealth pain management advice for regional areas where pain management services
are not available.
As for pain
management using prescribed medications – that is apparently going to be more
difficult to access as Painaustralia
and the Morrison Government are alarmed that opiate prescriptions in rural
& regional Australia have risen in the last ten years.
Seemingly conveniently
blind to any relationship between increased prescribing and low GP numbers, smaller often poorly
resourced public hospitals, a reliance on what might be termed 'flyin-flyout' medical specialists who prefer not to live in those rural or regional areas their patients
inhabit and the economic tyranny of distance for the patient.
The Daily Examiner, 18 June 2019, p.8:
Doctors will be sent
back to school to be re-educated about treating chronic pain and patients given
a Medicare boost under a new national strategy.
The first national pain
strategy launching today also calls for a national one-stop website to be set
up to educate people about how to manage pain without drugs and where to find
help.
“There is a screaming
need here because pain is a significant burden on the economy, on society and
the health system,” Pain Australia chief executive Carol Bennett said.
More than 3.24 million
Australians are living with chronic pain and many are becoming addicted to
opioid medications while they wait up to four years to see a pain specialist
for help.
Last year Australians
paid $2.7 billion in out-of-pocket expenses to manage their pain and missed 9.9
million days of work because of the condition.
The new strategy funded
by the Federal Government and developed by Pain Australia wants pain to be
treated in the same way as mental health, with Medicare funding up to 20
medical and group sessions to help people get it under control. It also calls
for a new certificate in pain medicine for GPs and other health professionals
that would require six months of study.
The consultation work
that took place around the development of the new plan found doctors’ knowledge
about the latest pain management techniques was out of date.
“For lower back pain
people are popping pills and having surgery but for the last 15 years we’ve
known you’ve got to get moving and rehabilitate yourself with physical
management,” Ms Bennett said.
Anti-inflammatory
medications should not be used for more than a few days and long-term
strengthening of the muscles, good nutrition and sleep were the key to treating
the problem rather than drugs, she said.
Instead of helping
patients manage pain in this way, doctors were prescribing increasing amounts
of dangerous and addictive opioid medicines.
