Pain Clinic
What is a Pain Clinic?
A pain clinic, also known as a pain management clinic, is a medical facility that specializes in diagnosing and treating chronic pain. A pain clinic aims to help patients reduce the amount of pain that affects their lives. They can help patients reduce or eliminate chronic pain, improve their quality of life, learn how to manage chronic pain independently, improve functionality, and identify goals to return to their previous daily routines.
The Need for Advancements in Health Equity in Pain Management
Pain clinics often support vital research to address health disparities in pain management and access to care. These disparities affect many populations, including racial and ethnic minorities, underserved rural populations, and sexual and gender minorities. There is a need for more specialty pain clinics across the United States to serve all populations and needs.
Pain Clinics Offering Collaboratory Management
Effective and collaborative pain management is a core responsibility of all clinicians. It is a growing priority at the National Institute of Health, pain clinics across the United States, among clinicians, patients, and regulators. The main objective is to provide a framework for comprehensive pain evaluation and individualized multimodal treatment. Improve patient quality of life and function in individuals who are experiencing pain, while reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with pain treatments, particularly opioid analgesics.
Patients are often confused about what physician type to see for primary and secondary health needs. This collaborative pain management focus aids pain management research. Pain is a significant public health concern for varied populations, and it often coexists with other medical and mental health issues.
Our Minnesota pain clinics focus on helping people who suffer from head, neck, and/or jaw pain. The primary goal is to provide pain relief.
We typically provide a multidisciplinary approach to care that offers evidence-based healthcare treatment plans. We partner with various healthcare professionals to address your complex healthcare needs in pain management. Given there are multiple types of pain and pain severity levels, how we serve patients is customized to your unique needs.
A pain clinic that practices innovative healthcare concepts in preventing chronic pain may offer training to large numbers of patients and healthcare providers about the challenges of chronic pain. In this way, successful pain clinics have a broad impact on patient care and the communities they live in.
Here are the Core Functions of a Pain Clinic
1. Comprehensive Diagnosis and Individual Evaluation
- Medical History & Physical Exam: Detailed questioning about pain characteristics, location, triggers, duration, levels, and past treatments, along with a thorough physical examination to assess range of motion, jaw muscle tension, and neurological function.
- Conducting Tests & Imaging Studies: May include X-rays, CT scans, or MRIs to identify structural abnormalities, inflammation, or nerve compression. For example, how the Trigeminal nerve associates with TMJ pain. A patient with teeth clenching issues may need a Bruxism Risk Assessment.
- Facial/Cranial Muscle and Neurological Evaluation: Assesses the function of the nervous system, including cranial nerves, to rule out neurological causes of pain, for example, neck pain issues brought on by TMJ.
- Facial Pain Evaluation: Examines the facial region, including teeth, bite alignment, and jaw joint health to identify any contributing factors. Understanding the causes of facial pain is a complex task.
2. Pain Management Treatment Plan
- Medication management: Pain relievers (over-the-counter and prescription), anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants, and antidepressants may be used to control pain.
- Physical Therapy: Exercises, stretches, and manual therapy to improve posture, muscle strength, and flexibility.
- Injections: Corticosteroid or botox injections into trigger points, joints, or nerve roots to reduce inflammation and pain.
- Sleep Therapies: Individuals suffering from sleep apnea-related pain often report lower pain tolerance levels. People with sleep apnea are more likely to experience chronic pain conditions like headaches, TMJfibromyalgia, and back pain.
- Lifestyle Modifications: Stress management techniques, ergonomic adjustments, and proper sleep habits.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Helps patients manage pain-related thoughts and behaviors to improve coping skills and reduce distress.
3. Specialized Pain Expertise
- Pain Management Specialists: Physicians specializing in pain medicine with expertise in diagnosing and treating head, neck, and jaw pain. This includes shoulder pain treatment as it often relates to head and neck pain.
- Physical Therapists: Focus on musculoskeletal pain, providing treatment plans tailored to head, neck, and jaw pain.
- Working with Neurologists: Assess neurological conditions and support neurologists through patient referrals when headache and facial pain specialists are needed.
- Working with Dentists: Address post-dental visit issues when having your mouth open for prolonged times contributes to jaw pain, such as temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ).
- Psychologists: Provide psychological support, coping strategies, and address pain-related anxiety and depression.
4. Interdisciplinary Approach
This means an experienced, interdisciplinary group of faculty from areas of medicine, dentistry, basic science, nursing, public health, and physical therapy work together to provide different perspectives on preventing chronic pain.
- Collaboration: The pain clinic may need to request a medical history from other healthcare providers. It will foster necessary communication and collaboration among all healthcare providers involved in the patient’s care.
- Personalized Treatment Plans: A multidisciplinary team develops an individualized plan based on the patient’s specific needs and goals. For example, our Twin Cities Pain Clinics provide tailored pain treatment plans for individual needs.
- Regular Follow-ups: Pain is seldom eliminated in one office visit. Pain may be temporarily alleviated or reduced by trigger point injection or dry needling. However, ongoing monitoring and adjustments to the treatment plan ensure optimal pain management and positive outcomes.
- Implementing a transformative care model: This integrates robust self-management training with evidence-based pain treatments through an interdisciplinary team approach to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. Simultaneously, it reduces dependency on the healthcare system and healthcare costs.
“Chronic pain conditions are the top reason patients seek care, the most common reason for disability and addiction, and the biggest driver of healthcare costs; their treatment costs more than cancer, heart disease, dementia, and diabetes care. The personal impact in terms of suffering, disability, depression, suicide, and other problems is incalculable.” – Preventing Chronic Pain: A Human Systems Approach by James Friction DDS MS
5. Pain Education and Ongoing Support
Listening in order to understand what a patient believes about the causes or consequences of pain assists clinicians in creating a pain management plan. For example, someone diagnosed with arthritis may be unaware of how an Orofacial Pain Specialist can help manage arthritis TMJ pain. Pain education is a critical way to better inform the patient and correct any assumptions or false beliefs.
- Patient education: Provides patients with information about their condition, treatment options, and self-management strategies. This may include education on what is a pain disorder or how you can partner in your myofacial pain integrated care.
- Virtual healthcare appointments: When it may be challenging to travel to your pain management appointment, telehealth virtual appointments are a vital aspect of support.
- A Pain Support Coach: Pain clinics offering pain health coaching give patients opportunities to connect with one-on-one help. Managing pain is not easy for individuals who are suffering from it. Gaining personal coping mechanisms and skills can make the needed difference to sustain lowered pain levels.
- Video traing: Many people learn to exercise correctly by following video tutorials. Watching videos that introduce a pain provider also helps patients be more comfortable when coming to a pain clinic for the first time.
- Information leaflets and downloadable PDFs: Pain clinics often provide handouts to take home when a patient leaves an office appointment. This is an ideal way to gain support for a new pain condition.
How to Manage Patient Expections when Visiting a Pain Clinic?
Here are some ways pain clinics manage patient expectations before visiting:
- Communicate before the appointment: A quick phone intake can help align patient expectations.
Send patients an information document in the weeks before their appointment to help them prepare and ask questions. You can also communicate about the pain clinic’s standard practices, such as the likelihood of further investigations or medication changes. - Build positive provider-patient relationships: Affective communication can help patients form more accurate expectations and increase their satisfaction with their visit. Often, they need to see a smile and feel like the pain clinic sees them as a person. This opens the door to understanding their real pain management needs.
- Answer questions: New pain patients are often unsure what to expect, so by inviting them to ask questions, you can best prepare them and meet them where they are at.
- Scheduling: Schedule patient appointments when you can relax. Try to schedule patient appointments when pain providers have sufficient time to focus on the consultation. Offer in-office visits and telehealth options, proving what works best for the patient.
