Green Visiting Professors rethink
a chronic problem
Join Christine Chambers\, Canada Resear
ch Chair in Pain and Child Health\, Dalhousie University and Micha
el Sullivan\, Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Health\, McGill Universi
ty for their fascinating talk on new ways of addressing pain.
The
se jointly appointed Green Visit
ing Professors address their theme by foregrounding psychological and s
ocial factors that determine pain experience and expression\, a perspective
that dramatically increases the potential for effective interventions with
poorly controlled acute and chronic pain beyond what can be achieved by at
tending to sensory experience\, biological processes and pharmacological in
terventions.
Christine Chambers’ work focuses upon in
fants and children and includes study of the impact of parental and other f
amily influences on pain in healthy children and children in clinical need\
, children’s empathy and memory for pain\, and protocols for controlling cl
inical procedural pain. Michael Sullivan’s orientation is
toward adult pain\, particularly the cognitive and emotional idiosyncratic
reactions that predispose to maladaptive and excessive distress and failure
to respond to treatment\, the origins of these dispositions in life histor
y and current social factors\, the factors that influence how we react to p
ain in others\, and emerging treatment interventions designed to target pai
n-related psychosocial risk factors. The key question raised in this lectur
e is: given high levels of poorly controlled acute and chronic pain\, how m
ight we transform health care delivery by incorporating novel ways of think
ing of and addressing pain?
Learn more about these Visiting Professor
in the Gree
n College Spotlight.