Informed Consent. 1-2-1 Injury and Pain Psychology

Informed Consent relates to your right to choose whether to take part in our 1-2-1 Injury and Pain Psychology Support. The following sections, give information of our support to help you make this choice with your own free-will, without undue influence.

It is important that you play an active role in giving and ensuring consent. If you have any doubt, please ask us your question. You can do this by asking your Consultant or by contacting Us (L&M Consulting Ltd) via our Get in Touch form.

• 1. Purpose of support

  Our support uses pain science education and psychological techniques to help You better understand and manage injury and pain.

  You should note that injury and pain are complex, and that the longer you have had an injury or pain, the harder it can be to resolve. We cannot therefore guarantee that We can help You resolve the injury or pain as You would like, but Our education and psychological techniques aim to help You:

  • Strengthen your control of the injury process.
  • Strengthen your ability to manage pain.
  • Protect and promote your psychological wellbeing
• 2. Our clients: Who we support

  As shown in our Client Requirements, our support is for those aged 16+:

  • Who are based in, and will access the service from, the UK or Ireland.
  • Whose injury or pain is musculoskeletal in origin and not due to a non-musculoskeletal diagnosis (e.g.: disease of the muscles, bones or joints; cancer; or nerve damage).
  • Without any mental health concern* for which someone would normally seek support from a GP or Qualified Health Professional, who are not awaiting or currently receiving therapy for mental health, and are not considered a vulnerable adult/young person. We can help you if you are on stable pain medication.
  • Who are ready to think about their injury or pain and to make changes to help.
  • Who are able to speak and understand fluent English.

  If at any point of Our support process, Your circumstances change so that You do not meet any of the above criteria, please inform your Consultant as soon as you can and before Your next support session.

  *Please see here for examples of mental health concerns and what to do if you have these concerns.

• 3. What our support is not

  Our support is not:

  • Clinical in nature, i.e., it is not designed to help You with any mental health concern for which people would normally seek support from their General Practitioner or a Qualified Mental Health Professional.
  • To diagnose or provide advice on the physical nature of the injury or pain.
  • To provide psychological assessment for any third party, including for court proceedings or compensation claims.
• 4. What our support involves

  Our support is grounded in research and UK-recognised good-practice: It recognises that injury and pain have physical, psychological and social causes and consequences.

  Support is through one-to-one discussion with Your Consultant to help You; reflect upon, better understand, and consider how to better manage injury or pain. It might also include brief questionnaires to measure Your experience.

  All sessions have a structure, but We focus on what is important to You and what best suits Your needs and preferences: The exact nature of any on-going support evolves over time.

  We use techniques based on three different psychological approaches/areas:

  • Cognitive Behaviour Approaches: Unhelpful injury and pain-related beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behaviours and emotions can all negatively affect injury recovery and pain. We use techniques to reduce these and to help You find and use positive alternatives that promote better recovery and management.
  • Wellbeing and Positive Psychology: Based on the above, these techniques help You; protect or improve Your psychological wellbeing, promote social support, and improve life control and fulfilment.
  • Health and Behaviour Change Psychology: These techniques help You to understand, commit to, and make helpful changes in a timely manner.
• 5. The support process

  Support starts with a 1 hour Starter Consultation. Here You describe Your injury/pain-related experience and situation. Our aim is better understand injury and pain, and how Your current beliefs, thoughts, emotions, injury/pain management strategies and lifestyle affect your injury and/or pain. A post-session report summarises this, and includes personalised recommendations to help You improve your psychological approach to injury.

  Thereafter, You can choose to:

  • Use the recommendations yourself to improve Your approach to injury or pain management.
  • Book a ‘Pay-As-You-Go’, 1 hour follow-up consultation to help with a specific area identified within the recommendations.
  • Book one of Our 5 x 1 hour session support programmes for either injury rehabilitation or pain management. These personalised programmes focus on the most important areas required for Your progress and support You to make the most effective and timely changes.

  Sometimes Our support benefits from advice or collaboration with other Qualified Health Professionals. We can do this, but only with Your consent (please see ‘Your Confidentiality’, section 8 below).

  It is important that You understand Your support. If at any point you have a question, please ask Your Consultant, or contact Us via Our Get in Touch form.

• 6. Who provides our support

  Our consultants:

  • Are post-doctorate, British Psychological Society (BPS) Practitioner Psychologists (Sport & Exercise Psychology) with HCPC practitioner registration. They have experience in various psychological techniques and are bound by the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (please see the BPS website for more info).
  • Have personal experience of how injury and pain can affect the ability to work and/or perform as usual and our personal/professional identity.
• 7. Foreseeable risks

  Having an injury or pain can lead to difficulties and emotional experiences that can change day-by-day and over time. Discussing Your experience and situation with Us, working towards change, noticing the benefits, or realising the need for further life change and acceptance, can be difficult and make You feel emotional. These emotions may be negative or positive and will change over time.

  Our support will evolve over time with Your requirements. However, We aim to improve Your experience and therefore the risk of taking part in Our support is considered low in comparison to Your not gaining psychological support. Please note that this estimation of risk is based on:

  • Your honest and accurate provision of information.
  • You seeking mental health or emergency support from a Qualified Health Professional as people normally would when they have mental health concerns.
  • You following any recommendation that We give You to gain support or advice from a Qualified Health Professional or emergency support.

  Where Our support benefits from the advice of, and collaboration with, other qualified health professionals, We will:

  • Encourage You to discuss Your specific situation and agree on a suitable course of action with them.
  • Discuss their input with You in relation to the use of psychological techniques.
  • Follow Your informed decision based on their guidance.

  Our support therefore poses no further risk over and above that identified by the Qualified Health Professional.

  You acknowledge that:

  • We are unable to guarantee that Our support will result in full recovery from Your injury or condition, or an easing of pain. We recommend support options that We believe are likely (based upon Our experience and training) to be effective, but We cannot guarantee results.
  • Online Only: No online service is a perfect substitute for an “in person” consultation with a Psychologist.
• 8. Your confidentiality

  Anything You share with Your Consultant or Us is regarded as confidential, whether it is business or personal information. We undertake not to, at any time, directly or indirectly, use or disclose any information You share with Us during Your sessions.

  Confidentiality will only be broken in situations where:

  • We are required to do so by law.
  • The Consultant has serious and immediate concerns in relation to You being of risk to self, to Us, or to others.

  Also, where*:

  1. You give Us permission to work with other Qualified Health Professionals or someone important to Your injury/pain management, e.g., Your manager or coach. What we can disclose to this third party will be discussed and agreed in advance by yourself and Us.
  2. The person receiving Our support is under 18 years old. Here, we will hold an initial ‘Can We Help You’ chat with the young person and the primary care-giver (PCG) to discuss the PCG’s role and to ensure that the PCG understands and accepts the importance of confidentiality. Thereafter, we will only give the PCG what they ‘have the right to know and need to know’, i.e., what they can reasonably require for their purpose of giving care. Typically, this information will be discussed with the young person before it is shared so that they can ask questions and provide written consent.
  3. Someone else has commissioned or paid for Your support. Here, You must tell Us this before We start supporting You. This enables Us to ensure that You and the commissioner understand and agree what information can be given. We will only give the commissioner what they ‘have the right to know and need to know’, i.e., what they can reasonably require for their purpose (e.g., of employment). Typically, this information is given in shortened form, and We will show You it before it is shared so that You can ask questions and provide written consent.
  4. Referral to a Qualified Mental Health Professional be necessary. Here, the process will be fully explained and personal information only given following Us gaining Your fully informed written consent.

  *You can at any point withdraw consent for information to be provided to any third party as outlined in 1-4 above. If you wish to do so, please tell Your Consultant in writing, or contact Us via Our Get in Touch form.

• 9. Data protection, appointment communications, and recording consultations

  Acuity Scheduling, Our booking system, will send you email and SMS appointment confirmations and reminders. You can withdraw your Consent to receive these reminders (but not the confirmations) by informing Your Consultant or contacting Us via Our Get in Touch form.

  • Online consultations: Your Consultant will take written notes, and may also audio-visual record sessions using the online platform (e.g., Zoom) recording facilities.
  • Face-to-face consultations: We audio-record sessions on a mobile device and the Consultant will take written notes.

  All recordings and notes are used solely to enhance the support provided, i.e.; to ensure Your Consultant can focus on You effectively, to allow fuller Consultant reflection, and for Consultant supervision. Your Consultant will respect any request that You make to temporarily stop audio- or audio-visual recording within your consultation, although You must then accept the limitations on Our service. You will be given a post-session report that summarises recorded information. All of this information will be kept by Us in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 2018. Please see Our Privacy Policy for more details of how we keep and store Your information.

  We ask that You do not audio or audio-visual record any session without asking for Your Consultant’s consent. Your Consultant has the right to say no to Your request, in which case We ask that You don’t record it.

  If, with Your Consultant’s consent, You do record a consultation, You agree to take full responsibility for the security of that recording, including but not limited to keeping it secure from unauthorised access and distribution. You further agree that You will not hold Us, or any anyone acting on Our behalf who provide services, liable should the video be lost, or accessed by anyone other than yourself.

• 10. Your Right to Withdraw

  You have the right to withdraw consent and from Our support at any stage without penalty. Please see Our cancellation policy and refund policy within Our
  Terms and Conditions of Purchase. If you wish to do so, please contact Us via Our Get in Touch form.

  We will review consent with You:

  • Where there are substantive changes in Our support (e.g., a change in Consultant or to collaborative support with another Qualified Health Professional).
  • If We have reason to consider that You may no longer consent.
• 11. I have concerns about my support: What to do

  If You have any concerns regarding Our support that You feel unable to discuss with Your Consultant, please contact Mr Paul Logan, Director, L&M Consulting Ltd, on email: paul@landmconsulting.co.uk

Do you still have a question?