Meeting of the Parliament 16 November 2022
This year, we have already invested more than £700,000 in direct support of pain management services and the improvements that we set out in the plan. That includes support for the Scottish national residential pain management programme and the clinical leadership required to deliver the plan and improvement activity. That is on top of the £425,000 that we have invested since 2020 in additional support for health boards and third sector and other partners to deliver new projects and enhance support for people with chronic pain through the modernising patient pathways programme, local improvement work and the pain management winter support fund.
Furthermore, our budget for health and social care this year will deliver a record £18 billion for services, including increases for community and primary care health services, where the vast majority of people with chronic pain are seen and managed.
To go back to the third sector organisations, the project by the Pain Association Scotland, alongside other work delivered by the charity, received funding of just under £40,000 from the Scottish Government’s chronic pain winter support fund earlier this year. A person who has chronic pain and who was supported by that initiative reported that the
“course and supporting information has made me feel seen, heard and understood in a way nobody has ever done before.”
They also said:
“You have really helped me to deal with”
the impact of the condition
“and the puzzle of my chronic pain.”
People with chronic pain have also told us about the challenges that they face in accessing local services when they need them, the impact that it has on their wellbeing and the missed opportunities for earlier and more effective intervention. Our framework includes an aim on accessible care, with specific actions to improve how local and national services are delivered to provide a more co-ordinated and consistent experience.
We will do that by sharing best practice, promoting innovative new approaches to service delivery and improving how services understand the needs of their local populations. For example, the report that we published today on the initial findings of our pain management panel highlights that access to support in primary care settings is a priority for people with chronic pain. For many, that is often the only place that they turn to for help to manage their condition. That supports the approach that we have taken to date to improve how specialist pain services work in partnership and share expertise with primary care colleagues.
Since 2020, we have provided more than £180,000 through the modernising patient pathways programme—which I mentioned—to develop new models of care to support people with chronic pain in their communities. An example of that is specialist pain pharmacists and nurse practitioners working together with general practitioners in NHS Ayrshire and Arran to improve their skills in supporting patients with chronic pain. Following that project, patients reported improved emotional wellbeing and greater confidence in managing their pain. There was also a reduction in the number of appointments for chronic pain, and GPs demonstrated safer and improved prescribing for pain management.
A patient who benefited from that project reported:
“Over the past few weeks I have increased my dog walking walks, have resumed outdoor bowling and feel confident meeting up with family and friends. All achieved by controlling my own pain management confidently.”
As well as improving community-based care, we know that we need to improve access to specialist pain services, which were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. I am incredibly grateful for the efforts of our dedicated pain workforce to recover and remobilise those services. The latest data shows that almost 80 per cent of people with chronic pain were seen for their first appointment within our 18-week referral-to-treatment target.