Transformative Care as a Strategy to Manage Chronic Pain

Transformative care is a strategy to really improve the care for patients with pain. It basically means integrating training of patients with treatment of patients. Evidence-based treatments work very well, slightly above placebo, and work fairly well short term, but most patients don’t want to be on long-term medications if they can help it. So training patients reduces those factors that contribute to the persistence of the pain, whether they be ergonomics, exercise, repetitive strain, emotional issues, loneliness--there are a lot of psychosocial factors that play a role. Each of those are factors that, if you improve, it actually turns the volume down on the pain, both at the peripheral level as well as the central level. So transformative care is a very simple concept of integrating training in with treatments.