Free Online Pain Management Course

[hellytheelephant]

If any of you, like me, have found your local pain service to be about as helpful as a chocolate teapot...then this might prove interesting. It is totally free to do the course, unless you want certification, and you can pick and choose which bits to look at.

Some of it is aimed more at professionals, but as a science numpty, I have found it really interesting ( I have done 2 weeks). As I have not done the whole course I cannot vouch for the approach of the whole course, but so far it has focussed on prevention and the 7 areas which affect pain.

Quote from the course intro:

'About this course: Chronic pain is at epidemic levels and has become the highest-cost condition in health care. This course uses evidence-based science with creative and experiential learning to better understand chronic pain conditions and how they can be prevented through self-management in our cognitive, behavioral, physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and environmental realms.'

https://www.coursera.org/learn/chronic-pain

 

[trishrhymes]

If it's the course I think it is, I tried it a few years ago and thought it was truly awful. Sorry! It really was not for me.

An awful lot of self congratulatory stuff about their pain clinic and how wonderful it is - it felt like one long advertisement, and I seem to remember the seven realms stuff seemed awful junk to me. And was there a genetics lecture by someone who admitted his knowledge was sketchy and it showed.

Maybe they've improved it since then. I hope it works better for you than it did for me. I wonder whether it was me who wrote their one star review - can't remember.

I'll be interested to hear how you get on. Don't let me put you off - everyone else gave it a high star rating.

 

[hellytheelephant]

@trishrhymes -apparently the course used to be aimed at health providers, and due to feedback they have changed it quite significantly to deal with the patient experience...and ( luckily for me), to be a bit less technical! Will let you know how it goes.

 

[Woolie]

'About this course: Chronic pain is at epidemic levels and has become the highest-cost condition in health care. This course uses evidence-based science with creative and experiential learning to better understand chronic pain conditions and how they can be prevented through self-management in our cognitive, behavioral, physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and environmental realms.'

OMG take care,@hellytheelephant, so many red flags in just this opening blurb.

The "epidemic levels" hints at a possible societal cause for chronic pain (as opposed to a bodily source), and the promise is not to help people manage pain but to prevent chronic pain conditions through correct thinking etc. (ie. they are completely avoidable with the right thinking).

Go cautiously amid the noise and hype, and remember what harms there may be in psychobabble. Take with you a huge pinch of salt. If you see the word "catastrophising" then pull back, pull back, you've hit a psychobabble artery.

Please do keep us posted though. I have a morbid curiosity!

 

[Shakota]

It seems I signed up that course and found that the main expert is a dentist. If I've got the right course in mind, it's all about treating pain without drugs. Yes! Good luck with that. I've run across MD-ridden websites that maintain that chronic pain sufferers (no mention of severity) must suck it up and train their minds to accept the pain or reject the pain, or whatever. Good luck with that, too!