Pain awareness

The idea

To discover community needs for managing pain. Staff at Cardiff University would love to work with the community and participate in a day where the primary aim is to ask the community what would be useful to help people manage and develop ways of moving forward with pain, with an aim of supporting future developments/ongoing activities.

Secondary aims will be to provide opportunities for people to express their pain through different mediums and suggest what pain means to them, and raise awareness of a range of resources that may help individuals explore the best ways to manage their persistent pain.

Progress

Community Gateway and academic staff from the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences ran a Pain Awareness Day in September 2018 which was linked to International Pain Awareness Month. The day was a drop-in event, allowing local residents to come and talk to professional staff and Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy students about persistent pain, and to learn about resources to help manage pain.

Sessions during the day included: ‘What is pain?’ Myth busting, a ‘Love activity/Hate exercise?’ session, and an Art for fun workshop. The day was also an opportunity for local residents to share ideas on what would help them to manage their pain at a local level.

Next steps

The reopening of the Grange Pavilion will provide opportunities to run regular sessions in the community on pain management.