Persistent pain management in prison: an exploration of current practice and patient needs, and facilitators and barriers to intervention engagement
New, P; Al-abbadey, M; Wood, L
Date: 2024
Article
Journal
Prison Service Journal
Publisher
HM Prison Service of England and Wales
Related links
Abstract
Persistent pain is a complex long-term condition (LTC) characterised by biological,
psychological, and social features.
It has a significant impact on the physical and emotional
function of individual patients and is associated with a lower quality of life, detrimentally
effecting families, communities, and wider society. Pain that ...
Persistent pain is a complex long-term condition (LTC) characterised by biological,
psychological, and social features.
It has a significant impact on the physical and emotional
function of individual patients and is associated with a lower quality of life, detrimentally
effecting families, communities, and wider society. Pain that continues for longer than 12
weeks is termed chronic or ‘persistent’ and affects between 18% to 51% of the world
population.
Pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as:
“An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue
damage.”
Persistent pain was acknowledged as a primary health condition in 2021,5
following the World
Health Organisation’s (2019) updated chronic pain guidelines,6 which recognised the condition
as pain that persists for more than 3 to 6 months. Studies have demonstrated that an inverse
relationship exists between persistent pain and socioeconomic status, with higher prevalence
rates seen in poorer areas. These social determinants are likely to be the same circumstances
that the prison population comes from.
England and Wales has a prison population of 85,851, most of whom are from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds and typically (53%) aged between 30 and 50. Higher levels of
poor health exist in the prison community in the UK and across Europe, compared with the
general population.
In addition, the Prison Reform Trust estimates that 50% of all people
entering prison have a drug problem.10 The intersection of coexisting persistent pain and opioid use disorder (OUD) poses problems for the prison system due to the diversion of medication
and safety concerns.
Clinical and Biomedical Sciences
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
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