Persistent Pain and Mental Health: Improving care and wellbeing

The Health Innovation Network (HIN) was one of four national test sites selected by the Q Improvement Lab (part of the Health Foundation) to test ideas in practice to improve care for people with mental health problems and persistent back and neck pain.

Project overview

Psychologically Informed Collaborative Conversations (PIC-C)

Working in partnership with the Physiotherapy Pain Association (PPA) and St Georges  and Kingston hospital’s Chronic Pain Services and Musculoskeletal  teams, we designed, tested and evaluated Psychologically Informed Collaborative Conversations (PIC-C), a training package for out-patient physiotherapists to:

  • increase awareness of the relationship between mental health and persistent pain,
  • increase confidence in starting conversations relating to psychological wellbeing
  • establish a mentoring and support structure for complex cases.

PIC-C is available for all health professionals interested in delivering psychologically informed consultations with patients.  For more information, including patient films and the Final report please click here.

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Read our blog to learn more about the project.

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Key achievements

  • Phase 1 of the Joint Pain Advice approach enabled the HIN to work in partnership with Sydenham Garden to train four staff members to deliver JPA appointments. Staff reported feeling more confident in their ability to talk to people and support them with the chronic joint pain.

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