Pain management service

The pain management service is based across Buckinghamshire Healthcare at Stoke Mandeville, Wycombe and Chalfonts and Gerrards Cross hospitals.

The acute pain service is provided at Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe hospitals and chronic pain services are provided at Stoke Mandeville, Wycombe and Chalfonts and Gerrards Cross hospitals.

The service is multi-disciplinary and includes consultant physicians, nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists, pharmacists, acupuncturists, anaesthetic and pain management trainees, as well as support from administrative and managerial staff.

Acute pain
The inpatient acute pain service covers Amersham, Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe hospitals. Members of the pain team provide support and advice for managing pain after surgery or trauma and other short episodes of pain due to disease.

The team is made up of nurse specialists and two consultant anaesthetists all with a special interest in acute pain management. They work closely alongside other disciplines, physiotherapists and pharmacists etc. The nurse specialists routinely review patients on wards on a daily weekday basis. Out-of-hours is covered by the on-call anaesthetist.

There are members of the pain team based at Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe hospitals, which enables them to support all patients requiring their expertise in order to make a speedy recovery through effective pain management.

Referrals into this part of the Trust’s pain service can only be made internally by any clinician, as the aim of the pain team is to support ward based staff for the effective management of short-term pain.

Chronic pain
Chronic pain is long-term pain that lasts for more than three months. One in eight people in the UK have chronic pain and there are many different types, although some are not clearly understood. Chronic pain may be related to an illness or disability, such as cancer or arthritis, or may start after an injury or an accident. Once healing occurs, pain is expected to resolve, but in chronic pain conditions, the pain persists beyond the time of healing.

The pain clinic provides a team approach to evaluation, management and treatment of chronic pain. Typically our patients have conditions such as back pain, neck pain, muscle and joint problems (arthritis), sciatica and other spinal nerve problems. They may also suffer from pain due to nerve injury or damage (neuropathic pain).

We believe that early education on how to manage pain combined with minimally invasive interventional therapy substantially reduces the number of patients requiring surgery or proceeding to disability.

Our treatment plan can include a combination of medication, pain interventional treatment, physiotherapy, acupuncture, pain education and access to transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TENS / TSE), referral for psychological assessment and individual or group cognitive behavior therapy and referral to other specialist services.