Pharmaceutical Society Of Australia Supports Draft National Pain Strategy

Main Category: Pain / Anesthetics
Article Date: 29 Oct 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) has welcomed the release of the initial draft of the National Pain Strategy.

PSA National Vice President and the only pharmacy representative on to the National Pain Summit Leaders' Meeting, Dr Lisa Nissen, said that PSA supported the intent of the draft strategy and looked forward to seeing the strategy finalised.

The Strategy aims to have pain management addressed as part of the Rudd Government's national health reforms. The draft strategy, the result of thousands of hours' work by more than 70 pain medicine specialists, other health professionals and consumers is now open for community and expert input.

Dr Nissen said, 'the meeting acknowledged that pharmacy has a key role in chronic pain management in the primary care setting, and that pharmacists need support in that role. By support I mean training to get the skills and tools they need to better manage people suffering chronic pain who live in the community.'

'It is pharmacists who see people who are in pain but cannot get an appointment to see a GP for days, or to see a pain specialist for weeks, or months. I was able to get this important point across at the meeting.'

'I believe the strategy has the capacity to lead to a collaborative approach being adopted, and that is a good thing. It was also good to see that the need for Quality use of Medicines in prescribing permeated the draft strategy,' she said The National Pain Strategy will be finalised at the National Pain Summit being held in Canberra on March 11, 2010.

Included in the draft strategy's recommendations are that:

- Chronic pain be recognised as a disease in its own right.
- Pain be given a diagnostic code along with other chronic diseases to document its prevalence, outcomes and costs.
- When monitoring patients, pain be included as the fifth vital sign (with blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and breathing rate).
- More effort be made to de-stigmatise pain (similar to the successful campaigns to de-stigmatise depression).

Chronic pain - defined as, constant daily pain for a period of three months or more - costs the economy an estimated $34.4 billion per annum or $10,847 per person affected, according to the MBF Foundation report The High Price of Pain conducted by Access Economics.

The report also found that more than 36.5 million working days were lost each year due to chronic pain, costing the economy and employers $11.7 billion annually in productivity losses.

The National Pain Summit is being organised by a Steering Committee with professional and consumer representation, under the leadership of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA), the Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM), the Australian Pain Society (APS) and consumer group, Chronic Pain Australia (CPA), in collaboration with the MBF Foundation and the Pain Management Research Institute.

Source
Pharmaceutical Society of Australia