St George’s team launches UK’s first ever Chronic Pain Awareness Day
Our Chronic Pain Self-Management Team at St George’s launched the UK’s first ever Chronic Pain Awareness Day earlier this month.
Roughly 43% of adults in the UK live with some degree of chronic pain – which is described as pain that lasts for longer than three months – but many people don’t have a proper understanding of the condition.
Because of this, our Chronic Pain Self-Management Team looked into supporting a national day to raise awareness but found one didn’t exist and decided to organise the UK’s first Chronic Pain Awareness Day instead.
The first Chronic Pain Awareness Day was launched on 1 May and saw a group of staff and patients taking part in a two mile walk from Tooting Bec Common to St George’s to tie in with National Walking Month.
Dr Anna Mathieson, Clinical Psychologist, and Baljit Daffu, Specialist Physiotherapist said: “We registered it as a national campaign on the NHS calendar and we’d like to run it each year, and hopefully make it a national event to further educate and raise awareness.”
“It was a really positive walk and it was great to see just how far some of our patients have come in terms of their physical and emotional wellbeing.
The group were welcomed by a tea and cake reception, before some patients shared their experience of living with chronic pain and staff spoke about the importance of self-management.
One of the patients on the walk said: “The support from the St George’s pain management team has been wonderful. I was taking painkillers for a long time, which caused me to have migraines, vomiting and develop other conditions. Through a care management plan, I’ve completely stopped taking painkillers and I’ve learnt techniques to manage my pain – this has had a huge impact on my quality of life, allowing me to get outside more and drive again.”
Dr Mathieson and Baljit wrote a blog post all about the event for our monthly blog with Tooting Daily PRSS which you can read here.
Notes to editors
For media enquiries, please contact Pippa Harper, Media Manager, via 020 8266 6128 or philippa.harper@stgeorges.nhs.uk
