This national campaign aims to raise awareness of pain and how you can describe your pain when communicating with healthcare professionals. www.mypainfeelslike.ie
'Living with chronic or nerve pain affects people’s well-being, their ability to be independent, their productivity and relationships, which can lead to feelings of depression' commented John Lindsay, Chairperson, Chronic Pain Ireland. “The ‘mypainfeelslike…’ campaign will help raise awareness of the impact of chronic pain and give people living with this disease the tools to re-evaluate their pain management plans'.
The main goal of ‘mypainfeelslike...’ is to support communication between patients and doctors. Pain is often difficult to describe. For example when defining localised nerve pain (also called localised neuropathic pain), patients tend to describe their individual pain experiences in rather pictographic ways like “my pain feels like an electric shock”, “my pain feels like a hot iron”, or “my pain feels like a cut from a knife”. Often doctors may not link these explanations to localised neuropathic pain as they learn the symptoms to be, for example, “burning pain”, “stabbing pain”, or “shooting pain”. This mismatch in language causes misunderstandings that can lead to an inefficient ‘trial and error’ treatment approach.
MS Ireland would like to thank MS & Me blogger, MS Advocate and person with MS Willeke van Eeckhoutte for participating in the mypainfeelslike campaign.
Further infomation and resources
Videos to watch
