Zoom recording of the session:
PDF of the Powerpoint presentation:
Live Well with Pain resources discussed in the session
Live Well with Pain Health and Wellbeing Check tool
The Live Well with Pain Health and Wellbeing Check tool is a self-completion, person-centred tool that can be shared easily with patients and clients.
The data from this completed tool will help identify the actual current impact of chronic pain on the individual and their health.
You can find a more detailed explanation of the Live Well with Pain Health and Wellbeing Check tool here.
NEW FOR 2025 – Live Well with Pain's Health and Wellbeing Check is now also online as an interactive tool for people with pain to use. Find it in the resources for people with pain.
Medicines Decision Guide
Is your patient wondering whether the pain medicines they take are really helping?
Completing this guide and sharing it with you can help them understand why they may be thinking about continuing, reducing or stopping their pain medicines.
The Great Opioid Side Effect Lottery
Often, patients being prescribed opioids for their persistent pain do not know how little benefit they offer over the long term, or how prevalent and varied are the side effects people experience.
This A4 sheet, designed to be used by clinicians in their consultations with patients, is a simple way to raise the question of benefits versus side effects.
Using a ‘lottery scratch card’ metaphor, the sheet explains that opioids only actually reduce pain for around 10% of people in the long term, and their side effects can be both wide ranging and serious.
It lists many of the side effects, and provides a number of statistics to show how common these side effects are.
Working through the list with your patient, ask them to tick those side effects they are experiencing, as a starting point for introducing the idea of a medicines review.
An opioid thermometer
How much opioid is a person taking? The opioid thermometer helps to estimate dosing based on oral morphine equivalent dose, and can be used to guide safer prescribing.
The PDF contains two versions: the first goes up to 120mg morphine per day, the second to 250mg morphine per day.
