Fast Track Pain Management in Primary Care
By Hunter Integrated Pain Service
The Hunter experience: Taking the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Medicare Local to fast track pain management in primary care.
With the remit of the new Medicare Local centred on collaboration between the primary and tertiary sectors, the Hunter Integrated Pain Service (HIPS) has wasted no time in leveraging the relationship to further promote access to pain management in primary care.
The project began with sponsorship from the National Prescribing Service (NPS) to strengthen the links between primary care and specialist pain clinic clinicians. From sponsorship of training locally came the offer of further funding to develop the resources and develop the project further.
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Objectives
The project has four main objectives:
- To further assist the paradigm shift in current pain service delivery.
- To promote the collaboration between primary and tertiary services and beyond through working together.
- To recognise that individual champions are necessary to enact change and benefit from enhanced collaboration.
- To demonstrate that clear commitment to the key change messages in pain management across the care continuum is vital to accelerate change.
Outcomes
One of the first outcomes of this project has been the development of a short educational video which was launched by GPAccess to YouTube in August called "Understanding pain and what to do about it in less than five minutes". This video is also available above.
The artistic work was co-ordinated by Andy Marriott and the team at SilverSun Pictures.
The development of the YouTube resource was seen as particularly important because it allows communication of key pain messages in a clear and concise format and more importantly is one that patients are comfortable and familiar with. Additionally the benefit of a short educational video is that it may prove useful for busy clinicians who have indicated that they need tools that can be utilized during patient consultations.
Another advantage of the video is the opportunity it provides to make use of social media as a distribution channel to disseminate the message well beyond the Hunter.
By linking a consumer survey via the Medicare local channels, HIPS hopes to gauge the effectiveness of social media as a tool to educate and promote health literacy.
Importantly, the video was released on YouTube under a creative commons license because both parties were keen for the information to be free from copyright restrictions. This means the resource needs to be highly accessible and YouTube is the most efficient way of doing this. The aim is to have the information shared as widely as possible so it is important that the content is reusable, as they say in the world of social media, "content is king".
HIPS have been excited by the rapid uptake amongst our colleagues near and far and hope that the resource will continue to be shared widely amongst the pain community.
Contacts
Clinical Nurse Consultant/Operations Manager
Hunter Integrated Pain Service
Phone: 02 4922 3435
www.hnehealth.nsw.gov.au/pain
Physiotherapist
Hunter Integrated Pain Service
Phone: 02 4922 3435
www.hnehealth.nsw.gov.au/pain
