We at The Rehab Center are committed to providing you with the highest level of care. The following information will help you understand our approach to pain management. We understand that chronic pain is challenging for you and has affected your life in many ways. Recognizing the complexity of your situation, we have an interdisciplinary staff. This means that our staff consists of health professionals from different backgrounds, each here to help you with the challenges that confront you.
After you are referred to The Rehab Center, our first priority is to understand your pain and associated difficulties as fully as possible. We request records from your previous medical care so that we can understand what treatments you have already received. You will then be scheduled for an evaluation by one or several of our professional staff in order to establish a plan of care. In the event that you have been referred to the functional restoration program, you will see a physician, psychologist and physical therapist as part of this evaluation. During the course of these evaluations, we will seek to understand the pain that you are having and the difficulties in your life that this pain has caused. We will also talk with you about your goals for improvement. Once we have this information, we will design a program of care for you that we believe gives you the best opportunity for improvement. At the end of this evaluation, we will have a conference where we will sit down with you and discuss our evaluations and recommendations for your treatment. We will answer any questions that you have and give you more detailed information about the treatment that we are recommending. In the event that we believe that you require additional diagnostic studies or other treatment, we will make those recommendations and assist you in obtaining the recommended care.
As you have come to realize, chronic pain has affected your life in many ways. The chronic pain itself can be very difficult to deal with. Many patients with chronic pain experience a downward spiral in which their level of activity declines because of their pain. The less they do, the more discouraged they become. As their tolerance for activity decreases, they experience more pain when they attempt activity, which results in greater discouragement and loss of function.
The purpose of rehabilitation is to reverse this process by helping you gradually improve your overall level of function while assisting you with the management of your pain and helping you deal with the stress associated with your condition. The rehabilitation approach recognizes that you have pain, and the goal is to assist you in returning to as normal a life as possible. Through gradual and systematic effort on your part, with our assistance, you should expect to experience improvement in your overall physical and emotional status. This may be a different approach than you have experienced in the past but has been demonstrated to be highly effective in helping people with chronic pain.
While in the program, you will work with our entire treatment team, including our physician, psychologists, physical therapists, rehabilitation nurse and vocational specialist. Each of our professional staff will work with you to develop a plan of treatment to address your particular challenges. Each team member will work with you on an individual and group basis. There is a significant emphasis on education in the functional restoration program. You will attend educational sessions each day. We believe that the more accurate information you have about your condition and the management of chronic pain, the better prepared you will be to manage your own chronic pain. The program schedule has been designed to provide you with a balance of activities throughout the day, with regular breaks from physical activity.
You will have the opportunity to meet with each treatment team member on a regular basis. Once a week, you will meet with the entire treatment team to discuss your progress and goals for the upcoming week.
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What To Expect