People may wonder what pain management looks like.  But, pain management is different for each person depending on what is generating and contributing to your pain symptoms.  We evaluate the biological, psychological, and social impact of pain on the individual and the elements of their life.  This means that we consider many aspects of the pain experience when coming up with a pain management plan.

First, we listen to the patient’s story regarding their pain experience since the definition of pain centers on each person’s experience with their symptoms and how it affects their life. This is the psychological aspect of their pain experience.  We ask how pain is affecting interactions with other, which is the social aspect of the pain experience.  We also pay attention to any past treatments such as procedures or surgeries that have been done to try to manage pain and we look at past diagnostic imaging studies, such as x-rays and MRIs to understand what may be contributing to the pain experience.  These help to define the biological aspect of the pain experience.  It’s important to understand the findings on imaging studies and response to past treatments in the context of the patient’s pain experience since each person gets to define their pain considering the results of past treatments and past imaging studies.  We never rely solely on imaging studies to define the entire aspect of a person’s pain.  We allow the patient to define their pain and describe their experience with it in a well-rounded manner that considers how pain can affect a person’s mood, outlook, interactions with others as well as their function at home and at work.  This view of the pain experience also informs our treatment plan which can often involve other specialists in multiple ways to address pain in what is known as a multidisciplinary approach.  This means that other disciplines, or specialties and clinicians, may be consulted to assist with management of a person’s pain experience.  Our recommendations may also include medications and injections which can be a part of this treatment plan but not every person requires the same type of treatment because not every person has the same experience with long-term pain.  For this reason, sometimes certain procedures or medications are not used in an individual treatment plan since we consider everyone’s specific experiences and problems that contribute to pain, such as arthritis, injury, stress due to pain, depression, etc., when we develop their personalized, multidisciplinary pain management plan.  We look forward to developing just such a plan for you in the future and we appreciate you considering the Javery Pain Institute for your pain management needs.