Back pain is one of the most common conditions known to man. It affects nearly everyone at some time in their lives and 40% of people will have had it within the last year, with around 5% of sufferers having taken time off work within the last month. When is long term, it causes a great deal of distress and unhappiness as it affects people's work life, income, home life, relationships, fitness and mood. This book is aimed at people who want to help themselves. It has clear succinct chapters giving advice about every aspect of managing back pain as well as answering frequently asked questions from sufferers. A key element is empowerment through a thorough understanding of why back pain starts and why it persists. There are chapters promoting stretching, exercise, relaxation, communication, advice on sexual relations and considerable emphasis on helping with thoughts and feelings. About the Authors: Dr John Lee has been a Consultant in Pain Medicine at UCL Hospitals since 2001. His specialist interest areas are back pain, development of services in primary care, and hospital management. He has developed outpatient care pathways to streamline treatment of patients with back pain, worked closely with his local PCTs to develop provision of multiprofessional services for patients with long term pain, been a Governor of his foundation trust, and worked on secondments for both the Healthcare Commission and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Suzanne Brook is an experienced Physiotherapist specialised in working with people who have chronic pain. She has worked in Hospitals, GP practices and private practice over the past 14 years within multi professional teams, including psychologists, doctors, nurses and occupational therapists. For the past 12 years Suzanne has been involved in the educating other physiotherapists and health care professionals in understanding the key to helping individuals manage their pain more successfully. She is especially interested in helping people with pain maintain their independence, return to or take up new hobbies and interests to help them maintain their fitness and confidence in exercising or participating in hobbies. Since qualifying as a clinical psychologist Clare Daniel has worked in chronic pain, audiology, women's health and HIV/AIDS services. The emphasis of her work is to help people reduce the psychological and physical impact of long term health problems. She is now the clinical lead of the UCLH COPE Pain Management Programme and is involved in teaching and training trainee clinical psychologists, physiotherapists and other health care providers. In addition to her doctorate in clinical psychology, Clare has completed the Oxford Diploma in Cognitive Therapy and the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Practitioners Training (University of Bangor). She also has an interest in chronic pain research and was a research associate at Imperial College London for three years. Clare has written chapters on cognitive behavioural interventions for long term health problems and has presented much of her work at national and international conferences. |
