This week I’m at Valley Forge Medical Center and hospital in Norristown PA for an APM™ Center of Excellence site visit and one day staff training that they generously opened up to the professional community. They are committed to becoming the first Center of Excellence on the East Coast and are well on their way to full designation.

The Addiction-Free Pain Management® System uses as its foundation a multidisciplinary collaborative teamwork approach that includes the patient as an integral part of the team. One of the primary goals of APM™ is to provide concurrent treatment for someone with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction using an evidenced-based manualized treatment approach.

Our mission is to collaborate with treatment providers who are committed to fully implement the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System. Our commitment is to recognize, support and help our APM™ Centers of Excellence (COE) partners reach as many people as possible with chronic pain and coexisting disorders who need and deserve state-of-the-art treatment.

Many treatment providers have asked me why they should go through all the time, effort and money to earn this designation when they can simply send staff to my APM™ Certification trainings and use my existing books with their clients.  This is an excellent question and I invite you to review the information on our Center of Excellence page to see if the APM™ Center of Excellence is of interest to your agency.  If you are interested please contact us to move to the next stage where we will send you a very comprehensive Center of Excellence overview and discuss fees and timing after your review.

To learn more about multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the November issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

People living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders, including addiction, have many obstacles that often make helping them very challenging.  Many of these people have tremendous amounts of grief and loss as well as other problems that lower their quality of life.  Some of the other major roadblocks are the patients’ high levels of denial and resistance to treatment.  Other major obstacles include shame based attitudes and approaches used by their treatment providers.

To help overcome these obstacles and for healing to occur they must feel listened to, understood, taken seriously and affirmed as human beings.  This is the starting point for them to overcome their treatment resistance and denial.  To do this requires a respect-centered approach utilizing a denial management interactional approach.

This is why I make an effort in my trainings to teach clinicians what I call the Formula for Success which is a process that helps overcome a client’s resistance and denial.  But before I explain the Formula for Success I want to first tell you about the Formula for Disaster.

The formula for disaster starts when a healthcare provider is unaware of a bias or prejudgment they have about their patient.  In their mind they know what the patient needs even before they tell their story.  Often they use what I call a cookie-cutter approach or a one size fits all treatment strategy.  If there is a coexisting addictive disorder, a negative bias or stigma is often involved; after all they’re just an addict. 

This prejudgment is often followed by insensitivity; especially if the clinician is overwhelmed or overworked.  Many times they talk at and work on their patients instead of talking with them and working with them, instead of on them.  Added to this pre-judgment and insensitivity, many clinicians resort to confrontation in order to get their patients to do what they want; this is the “my way or the highway phenomenon.”  This combination almost always leads to a power struggle. 

When I ask people in my trainings who they think usually wins this power struggle, many of them believe it’s the patient, others say the provider. The patient may feel they win because they’re not going to let you put one over on them.  And the provider may feel like they win because they knock the patient into compliance—but it’s usually a malicious compliance.  Some training participants get it right away, nobody really wins.

I believe it’s vitally important to change this dynamic by implementing the formula for success which starts with the provider recognizing, then replacing pre-judgments with understanding.  The best way I know to gain this understanding is to really listen to what the patient is actually saying.  To do this a clinician must use empathic and active listening to make sure they are receiving what the patient is sending. 

The next step is to replace insensitivity with compassion and empathy—not sympathy.  Instead of confrontation it is important to use positive strength based challenge.  Sometimes this challenge is a tough love approach; but always with respect and in the best interest of the patient. 

When we pull all of these pieces together we get collaboration instead of power struggles.  This collaboration is the crucial first step for effective healing to occur. That is why the Formula for Success is an integral component of the Addiction-Free Pain Management™ System.  My goal is to always work with people; not on them!

To learn more about respectful treatment for chronic pain management and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are in recovery and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing your pain and medication effectively go to our Publications page and check out my book the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

We have a busy fall schedule and some new postings for 2009 for upcoming trainings that you can check out on our Calendar page.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.
 

I’m on my way today to present at the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapist (CAMFT) at their annual Mental Health Thought Leaders Conference that opens tomorrow.  My topic is the role of the psychotherapist in providing effective chronic pain management.

The role of a psychotherapist is crucial in treating the synergistic problems facing couples and families being severely impacted by chronic pain, addiction, or other psychological disorders.  When these conditions coexist; there is a major challenge that must be addressed utilizing a multidisciplinary treatment approach and the inclusion of a psychotherapist is vital.  When these coexisting conditions occur the family problems increase synergistically but how to treat them becomes very challenging and confusing for healthcare providers including therapists as well also for patients and their families. 

I believe that effective treatment includes a strategic three-part approach for improving treatment outcomes and giving these patients and their families new hope. The reason for this multi-pronged approach is due to what I call the Addiction Pain Syndrome.™  When someone living with chronic pain also experiences coexisting psychological problems including addiction a synergistic set of symptoms occur.  This phenomenon requires a synergistic treatment system that addresses it effectively.  The three core components of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System accomplishes this treatment goal. 

To learn more about multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the November issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.