Pain Education Program (PEP)

PEP is a multi-disciplinary program centred around pain education based on current best practice guidelines for the management of clients with persistent or chronic pain.
For a period of 6 weeks participants will be provided with a combination of individual and group based therapy sessions.

PEP is run by Dan a musculature Physiotherapist and Bernadette a Psychologist, both allied health professionals trained and experienced in the treatment of persistent pain. Both Bernadette and Dan are Local Pain Educators with The Pain Revolution (www.painrevolution.org).

“Inside every chronic patient is an acute patient wondering what happened.” – F. Marcus Brown, 2002

“We work with people who experience back pain, musculature pain, arthritis conditions, neuropathic conditions, visceral pain, phantom pain, headache and migraine, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, as well as depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms and other emotional challenges related to pain.”

PEP provides evidence based treatments.  These include a combination of physical techniques and Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT).

As such, PEP focuses on both the mind and the body and includes;

  • Education about what happens in the mind and body when we have pain
  • Movements, exercises and stretches to do at home
  • Visualisation tasks (things you picture “in your mind’s eye”or on picture cards)
  • Ways to examine and manage your thoughts and feelings about pain
  • Adjustments to the ways you approach your everyday activities
Click here to refer a client

PEP is a 6 week program with one session per week and includes”

  • A mix of individual and group sessions
  • Sessions between 1 1/2 to 2 hours duration
  • A minimum of 8 and maximum of 10 patients
  • Health Clinicians:
  • Consider referral when the patient has persistent pain and:
  • The patient has been screened for red flags,
  • Reasonable and accessible management in the primary care sector has been tried with insufficient success,
  • Pain has a significant impact on some aspect of life – sleep, self-care, mobility, work or school attendance, recreation, relationships and/or emotions.

Referrals are particularly encouraged when the patient has:

  • Complex psycho social influences on pain behaviour requiring specialised assessment and care
  • Current or past history of addiction or prescribed medication use that seem to be complicating current management eg. an escalating opioid requirement.