A national healthcare policy initiative

The management of pain in Australia is shockingly inadequate.

One in five Australians will suffer chronic pain in their lifetime yet up to 80% living with this debilitating condition are missing out on treatment that could improve their health and quality of life. An MBF Foundation report conducted by Access Economics has estimated that chronic pain costs the Australian economy $34 billion per annum.

People with acute pain (after surgery or trauma) or cancer pain are effectievly treated only 50% of the time.

At the National Pain Summit, held on Thursday March 11, 2010 at Parliament House in Canberra more than 130 organisations - representing Australia's leading authorities in pain medicine, other healthcare professionals, industry, funders and consumer groups - united to back the world’s first National Pain Strategy.

In summary, the Summit:

• Called on the Federal Government to support the formation of national representative body to include all stakeholders in pain management.
• Called for recognition of chronic pain as a condition in its own right with access to treatment in the chronic disease model of care.
• Called for the introduction of standardised national interdisciplinary pain management networks. These would ensure linkages through all stages of treatment - from prevention of chronic pain, through primary and community care to secondary and complex tertiary care.
• Called upon Federal and state governments to back a community-led program to destigmatise chronic pain in the minds of the community and the medical profession.
• Through better education, spread the message that a wider range of help - beyond painkillers - is available.
• Called for the introduction of pain as the fifth vital sign along with blood pressure, pulse, temperature and breathing rate. This will give a much needed focus to regular assessment of pain much in the way that temperature charting helps in following the treatment of infection. This mirrors policy of both the US Veterans Administration health system and the Canadian Council on Health.
• Called for a formal coding system for pain in hospitals to allow prevalence and other data to be tracked.

The summit was led by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, Faculty of Pain Medicine, the Australian Pain Society and Chronic Pain Australia in collaboration with inaugural supporters’ MBF Foundation and the Pain Management Research Institute.