Review Article
Return To Work As A Treatment Objective For Patients With Chronic Pain?
Sullivan MJL1* and Hyman MH2 | |
1Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada | |
2Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA | |
Corresponding Author : | Michael Sullivan Department of Psychology, Medicine and Neurology Canada Research Chair in Behavioral Health McGill University 1205 Docteur Penfield, Montreal (Quebec), H3A 1B1, Canada Tel: 514 398 5677 Fax: 514 398 4896 E-mail: michael.sullivan@mcgill.ca |
Received December 20, 2013; Accepted January 15, 2014; Published January 17, 2014 | |
Citation: Sullivan MJL, Hyman MH (2014) Return to Work as a Treatment Objective for Patients with Chronic Pain? J Pain Relief 3:130. doi: 10.4172/2167-0846.1000130 | |
Copyright: © 2014 Sullivan MJL, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Abstract
Evidence-based clinical guidelines emphasize early return- to-work as a critical treatment objective in the management of recent onset pain conditions. However, something changes when a pain condition becomes chronic. For chronic pain conditions, return-to-work is rarely put forward as a primary treatment objective. Consequently, successful return to work is rarely an outcome in the treatment of chronic pain conditions. This editorial makes the case for placing return-to-work as a central objective of the treatment of chronic pain, regardless of the duration of chronicity.