Helping Your Organisation Support Colleagues with Injury or Pain.

L&M’s comprehensive support can help your organisation:

  • Better support employees with injury or pain.
  • Embed good injury and pain prevention and support practice within your culture.

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    The Why Questions

    Injury and Pain Management: Why is it So Important for Organisations.

    Every business should be aware of the amount of days lost to, and direct cost of, musculoskeletal injury and pain-related absence.
     
    Across the UK,

    • Musculoskeletal injury accounts for 6.9 million (29% of all) working days lost due to work-related ill-health: On average, each case is absent for 14 days (Labour Force Survey, 2018/19).

    The hidden cost of injury and pain is less known, e.g., of reduced; productivity, presenteeism and work-place morale, and of short/long term loss of expertise. This is particularly the case with chronic pain. Every day, 2/5ths of the UK population are affected by chronic pain. Despite being associated with increased age, all ages can be effected by chronic pain, i.e., up to 30% of 18-39 year olds may have chronic pain (Fayaz, et al. 2016).

    Psychology: Why is it So Important for Healing and Pain Management.

    Acute pain is the result of an injury or disease that usually lasts for a specific amount of time and fades as its cause heals. Chronic pain is pain that persists beyond the normal tissue healing time of 3 months, and may occur in the absence of any physical damage. Pain messages from the body are interpreted and regulated within the brain’s emotional centre. As such, our mood state and what we believe and think about our injury and pain can:
     

    • Affect the extent and speed of recovery from acute injury and pain.
    • Increase the likelihood of an acute injury recurring.
    • Lead acute injury and pain to become chronic pain.
    • Lead to chronic pain without any obvious physical damage.

    This in turn has a cyclical effect on our perceived and real functional ability, mood state, relationships, and thus our subjective wellbeing, ability to work, and quality of life.

     

    Our Support Methods

    All injury and pain psychology support is delivered by our personable, BPS Chartered Psychologists, who can co-ordinate with other medical professionals as required. Our support is: effective, cost-effective and grounded in research and good practice. It can be flexible to your specific needs, but might include:

    1-2-1 Injury and Pain Psychology Support

    Professionals expect to be able to live and work optimally. Injury and pain can therefore be as frustrating as debilitating, and can lead to beliefs and reductions in mood state that; slow healing, exacerbate their pain, increase the likelihood of chronic pain, and further reduce their functional capacity and quality of life.

    1-2-1 Injury and Pain Psychology Support helps individuals:

    • Understand the role of psychology in how they heal and experience pain.
    • Increase their awareness of, and challenge, counter-productive injury and pain-related beliefs.
    • Consider and adopt more helpful beliefs and actions that will enable them to better manage the influence of injury and pain on their work and personal life.

    Support is available via video call or face-to-face at your organisation’s office (fee depend on the session duration and our travel time/costs from our office in the SE England). With the individual’s consent, we can also co-ordinate with key personnel within your organisation and medical professionals as required to provide more holistic support.

    Further information on our 1-2-1 Support is available here.

     
    Education and Workshops: All can be delivered face-to-face or on-line, in 1 hour sessions or in ½ day/1 day segments.

    Understanding Pain: Useful Things for Everyone to Know and Do.

    Anyone can experience pain at any point in their life. For some, pain goes quickly, but for others it becomes prolonged or keeps returning with real negative effect on personal wellbeing and every day work and life activities.

    Advances in neuropsychology show:

    • How well and how quickly we respond to pain is key for the best chance of recovery.
    • What we believe and think about pain plays a crucial role in our ability to cope, recover and preserve personal wellbeing.

    Based on this research, this presentation or workshop gives understanding of how the body and brain respond to injury and process pain, and gives practical steps of how best to control pain and to return to normal life as quickly as possible.

    Employee Workshop Series: Helping and Supporting Employees to Understand and Manage their Pain.

    A series of educational, but user-friendly and collaborative workshops where individuals:
     

    • Gain increased understanding of how the body and brain respond to injury and process pain.
    • Have the opportunity to discuss and consider pain-reduction technique application.
    • Gain/give social support.

    For maximum results, workshops can be supplemented with our one-to-one Injury and Pain Psychology Coaching to enable more personalised discussion and change support.

    Also, due to the importance of social support for improved coping, L&M can facilitate supportive forums for employees with pain. Here, we use our expertise to educate as required, but also to nurture the sharing of personal experiences, guidance and encouragement.

    Manager Workshop: A Guide to Supporting Colleagues with Pain.

    Managing employees with pain can be difficult, especially when their pain is chronic and affects their work capacity.

    Here we:

    • Demystify the experience and myths of being in pain.
    • Help managers consider how to best provide day-to-day support to colleagues with pain.
    • Highlight some of the cultural processes and managerial behaviours that can lead to work-related pain and the manager’s role in preventing pain.

     
    Research: L&M’s post-doctoral researchers are ideally placed to design and conduct research to answer your specific injury and pain-related questions. For example:

    • How can we reduce the amount of work-related employee injury and pain?
    • How can we reduce stress-related pain?
    • Is our culture supportive of those with, or those who support those with, injury and pain?

     

    Where Do L&M Work?

    L&M are based in London and the SE England, but can work in person or remotely across the UK and beyond.
     

    Can we help? Do you have any questions?

    Please get in touch so that we can listen to your needs and discuss how we can best support you.

    Contact Us