Injury & Pain Psychology Training

What Everyone Needs to Know About Injury and Pain

Anyone can experience injury or pain at any time.

Some heal quickly. For others, injury or pain continues or returns. This can negatively affect every day work and life activities, and their health and wellbeing.

Workshop Outcomes. For everyone to understand:

• What happens within our body and brain when we’re injured or in pain, and how this affects recovery.
• That injury, pain and recovery are affected by what we believe, think, feel and do.
• That doing the right things quickly is key for the best recovery.
• Practical steps to manage injury and pain, and to give ourselves and others the best chance of a good recovery.

Available as: a 1 hour education session with Q&As or as a longer workshop.

Reducing Back Pain: What Everyone Should Know.

4/5s of us will get back pain in our lives, whilst back pain is the highest single cause of work-related musculoskeletal disorder absence and disability with the UK.

Recent research shows that the many back pain myths within our society increase not only the rates and severity of back pain, but also prevent people from making informed choices of how to prevent and reduce it.

Workshop Outcomes. For everyone to understand:

• The most common back pain myths and their opposing truths.
• The real causes of back pain.
• What to do to prevent back pain and to improve recovery

Available as: a 1 hour education session with Q&As, a 1/2 day workshop, or as a series of education and support workshops for those with back pain.

Staff Workshop Series: Understand and Reduce Your Pain

This series is for staff with injury or pain. It covers key findings from pain science and provides a supportive environment for people to focus on what they need to do to recover.

Workshop Outcomes. For everyone to:

• Understand what happens in the body and brain when we’re injured or in pain.
• Understand the common physical, psychological and social factors that cause pain and help recovery.
• Consider what helps and hinders their own injury and/or pain management and recovery.
• Develop their own pain management and recovery plan.
• Gain and give support.

For optimal results, these can be combined with:

• Our 1-2-1 Injury and Pain Psychology Support for more personalised discussion and change support.
• Post-course support sessions. Here we continue to meet to discuss progress and support each other. We encourage discussion, educate and reinforce as required.

Available as: 6 x 1 1/4 hour sessions or a full day workshop with 2 follow up sessions.

A Guide to Managing Those with Pain

Managing staff with pain can be difficult, especially when their pain is chronic or it affects their work capacity.

But managers play a crucial role in whether pain becomes chronic and how well people recover. So a manager who knows the facts about how and why we have injury and pain can make a big difference.

Workshop Outcomes. For everyone to:

• See through the myths of injury and pain, and to demystify the experience.
• Understand what happens within our body and brain when we’re injured or in pain.
• Consider how manager behaviour and the culture they create can lead to work-related pain.
• Consider the manager’s role in aiding recovery.
• Consider how to best provide day-to-day support to colleagues with pain.

Available as: 1/2 or full day workshop.

What HR & Senior Management Need to Know About Injury and Pain

Musculoskeletal disorders are the second highest cause of work-related sickness absence (HSE, 2021).

In contrast to the many unhelpful pain-related myths that prevail in our society, latest pain research clearly shows how individuals and every level of an organisation can take control to reduce injury and pain and to promote recovery.

Workshop Outcomes. For HR and Senior Managers to understand:

• The problem of injury and pain in the workplace.
• What happens inside us when we’re injured or in pain: Dispelling the myths that reduce recovery.
• The 5 psychological factors that predict return to work, and how all can be helped or hindered by work culture.

1/2 and full day workshops provide an opportunity to reflect on your current practice and culture. It can be designed around your needs, but might include;

• What do you know about pain in your workplace? What should you know?
• What causes injury and pain in your workplace?
• How to embed knowledge of the 5 psychological factors that predict return to work into your everyday practice and culture.

Available as: a 1 hour education session with Q&As or as a ½ or full day workshop.

The Psychology of Injury and Pain Recovery: What Everyone In Sport Needs to Know

Anyone can experience injury or pain at any time.

Some heal quickly. For others, injury or pain continues or returns. This can negatively affect every day work and life activities, and their health and wellbeing.

Workshop Outcomes. For everyone to understand:

• How we process injury/pain and recover.
• How beliefs, thinking and emotions affect recovery.
• How we as individuals and as part of sporting cultures can influence injury recovery.

Available as: a 1 3/4 hour, interactive education session.

Creating A Strong Recovery Environment

Helping your injured athletes to heal as well and as quickly as possible is a priority for any sport rehab team. But the biopsychosocial nature of injury and pain, means that it is much more than your team’s practical rehab skills that affects recovery.

Workshop Outcomes. For everyone to consider:

• The science of why and how enviro-psycho-social factors affect recovery.
• The everyday interactions, club practices, and cultural narratives/values that affect your athlete’s recovery.
• Practical steps that you can take to improve your rehab environment.

Available as: a 1/2 or full day workshop.

How to Talk Pain Better

Pain science shows the key role that our beliefs, memories, thoughts, and emotions play in the making of acute and chronic pain. Further, as healthcare practitioners, how our words and actions can either add to our patients’ unhelpful, pain-building thoughts, or start the vital education process that can shift them away from pain (Moseley & Butler, 2021).

In this presentation, Caroline give’s a headline tour of how the brain and body make pain, and of the five, reliable, psychosocial predictors of return to work and prolonged work disability (e.g., Sullivan, et al., 2011; Edwards, et al. 2016). She will then use these to share her thoughts, and to encourage you to reflect, on how we can best help our patients in just a few minutes.

Available as: A 1 hour presentation with Q&As or a 1/2 day workshop.

Testimonial: Lt Col S Bahadur, Consultant-lead for Rheumatology, DMRC Stanford Hall.
“Caroline – you were superb. Lots of positive comments at the end (its quite an effort for these busy clinicians to submit a written compliment on MS TEAMS so it reflects how much they valued your presentation). Even more verbal compliments came my way over the last 2 days.”