Pain Peculiarities in Everyday Life

12-Month Subscription

Unlimited access to:

Thousands of CE Courses
Patient Education
Home Exercise Program
And more

Subscribe Now

First Chapter Free Buy Course

Pain is a normal part of human existence: everyone experiences it, but not everyone experiences it in the same way. An individual’s age, job situation, personality, and socioeconomic status shape their pain experience and can have a significant impact their prognosis and treatment. This course will explore the bio-psycho-social aspects of pain, with particular attention given to kids and pain, work and pain, personality and pain, and socioeconomic status and pain. The course will also answer the question of “So what?,” offering clinical applications for each of these factors. Getting a handle on pain peculiarities will equip therapists to point their treatment plans in a direction that fosters meaningful change in the lives of their patients.

Meet your instructor

Adriaan Louw

Adriaan earned his undergraduate degree, master’s degree, and PhD in physiotherapy from Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa. He is an adjunct faculty member at St. Ambrose University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, teaching pain science. Adriaan has taught throughout the US and internationally for 25…

Read full bio

Chapters & learning objectives

1. Kids and Pain

The experiences children have from a very early age can influence the degree to which pain impacts their lives in the future. Participation in contact sports, circumcision, and NICU needle pricks in babies have all been shown to impact pain later in life. Therapists need to be aware of the impact of such events in order to maximize the impact of their interactions with kids in pain and the parents that care for them.

2. Work and Pain

Patients in pain often are removed from their work, and once removed, return is not guaranteed. Several factors predict chronic pain and disability among workers. This chapter explores the strong and moderate predictors of chronicity and challenges therapists to apply TNE preemptively in industry to minimize the impact of pain-related absenteeism and disability in the workplace.

3. Personality and Pain

What makes some people resilient in the face of pain, while others seem to fold in on themselves, allowing pain to govern every aspect of life? Personality characteristics have been shown to have strong correlations to pain experiences. This chapter explores depression, neuroticism, anxiety, coping strategies, and catastrophization. Opportunities for screening and education are introduced as possible mediators to the personality traits that predispose individuals to chronicity.

4. Socioeconomic Factors and Pain

Socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) increases the risk of pain. Coping strategies, ethnicity, occupational factors, and other factors influence individual pain experiences. This chapter explores those factors, as well as suggesting options for clinicians to work within those constraints or to remove barriers where possible.

More courses in this series

Warning Signs and the Perception of Pain

Adriaan Louw

Social and Cultural Constructs of Pain

Adriaan Louw