How is our research helping young people to talk about their pain?

在1000万关节炎的人中，超过一半的人说他们经历了疼痛every single day, and eight out of ten say they experience it most days. This includes childhood pain, which is still very poorly understood.

Dr Rebecca Lee is aVersus Arthritis foundation fellowinvestigating the way young people and children experience pain. This includes how they communicate this with their doctor and how this could be improved. Here Rebecca shares why she’s passionate about her research:

How did you get into pain research?

My interest in pain research started during my undergraduate Psychology degree and continued into my Master’s degree in Health Psychology.

During my PhD within the流行病学中心与关节炎beplay体育怎么下载, I realised that many of the ways in which we try to assess pain experiences do not take account of the developmental level of the child or young person, or how they may talk about pain. This sparked my interest to study new ways of communicating pain.

我和孩子和年轻人wi密切合作thjuvenile idiopathic arthritison the development of a digital pain self-assessment tool called ‘My Pain Tracker’.

My Pain Tracker可用于记录有关疼痛的每日信息，包括强度，位置，素质，情感和干扰。这使患者，他们的父母，医疗保健专业人员和研究人员可以随着时间的推移而不仅仅是一次性快照来研究有趣的模式。

Why can talking about pain with your healthcare professional be difficult?

疼痛的经历高度个性化和复杂。即使是成年人，我们也不总是有这些经历的话，对于儿童和年轻人来说，这甚至可能会更棘手。疼痛可能会出现在几个不同的位置，所有这些位置可能会感到不同，并且具有不同的强度，素质和后果。随着时间的流逝，日常生活中疼痛的影响会大大变化。

Some people may have good or bad days or weeks or have pain that is worse in the morning and better in the evening. Keeping track of all of these differences AND being able to find the words to tell someone else about it can be very challenging.

Why can this be more challenging for children and their families?

Children and young peoples’ way of thinking, their perspectives, their understanding of timelines or consequences of pain may be very different to those of the adults around them, including their parents as well as healthcare professionals.

There are also interesting dynamics involved when parents are part of consultations. For example, children and young people may want to protect their parents from hearing about the impact of their pain. Parents may also have their own perceptions about pain and they can be a useful additional source of information for healthcare professionals.

What is the aim of your current research?

The aim of my current research is to find out how we can best support effective “Communication by Healthcare professionals Assessing and Managing Pain”; hence the acronym “CHAMP”. I am exploring how pain is being discussed amongst healthcare professionals and how this influences pain management decisions, particularly in paediatric rheumatology.

I am also investigating the conversations about pain which are had between children/young people, parents and healthcare professionals to find out what ‘good’ pain communication is as well as what ‘poor’ pain communication looks like. Ultimately, I am hoping to develop methods to make pain communication better by building upon those ‘good’ aspects of pain communication.

What has your research found so far?

I am currently collecting lots of new research data and so I will have much more to tell you next year.

到目前为止，我已经确定了医疗培训中一些重要的差距，我们现在可以开始解决。疼痛研究领域正在迅速发展，我们需要找到方法来更新当前医疗保健专业人员在儿科风湿病学上的疼痛知识和疼痛管理技能。

你可以阅读my article about how ways we could potentially update pain knowledge在将来。

How do you hope your research will help treatments in the future?

The findings of this research will go a long way towards improving how healthcare professionals assess and communicate about pain with children and young people with persistent musculoskeletal pain.

I hope that the resources that I create will support healthcare professionals, parents and children/young people with pain, as well as improve both the short-term and long-term outcomes of these younger individuals.

You can keep updated on the progress of my research by on theCHAMP studies project website。

Our services

If you or a family member under the age of 25 has arthritis, we run a Young People and Families service that provides information and support and puts on a range of events across the country.

Our service helps young people and children offers advice on how to live well with arthritis, medication and potential treatments, as well as creating a safe space to ask questions, receive information and develop support networks.

Find out more about our Young People and Families service。 

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• If you would like to talk to someone, you can call our freehelplineon 0800 5200 520
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