Interdisciplinary pain therapy
Pain is multi-dimensional phenomenon with a wide variety of possibilities with regard to the location, intensity and quality of pain. Pain influences the quality of not only the patient's but also their relatives lives; it also causes the health system substantial costs incurred by pain-related complications and the chronic character of the malady.
Pain must be understood as a multi-dimensional and interprofessional problem with care being at the centre of attention. In pain therapy teams, professional care plays a key role of pain management. A basic requirement is that care services are rendered continuously in close collaboration with the physicians involved.
The main aim is to relieve patients with acute or anticipated pains of unnecessary suffering and to prevent their pain becoming a chronic occurrence. Due to their close contact with the patients, care professionals therefore are the patient's partners and agents alike. Pain management has the task of recognising and objectively describing a patient's pain as well as to observe the patient during the treatment, give advice and guidance and to coordinate and apply adequate therapies. An absolutely mandatory prerequisite is an up-to-date and systematic pain assessment and progress control by means of instruments of assessment or methods of documentation. Pain measurement and documentation, if based around a multi-dimensional approach to pain evaluation, are fundamental to individualised and adapted pain alleviation. 'Both, detailed patient monitoring and planned and consistently taken actions have a positive impact on the overall pain syndrome.
To help patients and their relatives strengthen their own competence, therapies should aim for giving training and advice at a very early point in time. For example, training and advice will eradicate prejudices against pain medication and make patients become active pain management partners. The controlled treatment of acute pain aims for freedom from pain, whereas a comprehensive alleviation of pain has the focus of treating chronic pain.
The RKU's care professionals have the knowledge and skills required for systematic pain assessment and medical pain treatment basics, and they know the side-effects and how to deal with them. They profit from the interprofessional rules of conduct applicable to all medical pain treatment practiced at the RKU. Multiplicators support the care professionals in all care teams. They have the necessary advisory and training competence with regard to pain and pain-related problems.