Pain & Work: Evidence Based Practice to Enhance Work Participation and Quality of Life

This course will provide participants with state-of-the-art evidence on the interplay between chronic pain and work. The leading paradigm will be the main message from the 2006 landmark study by Waddell and Burton: good work is good for health and well-being. We will present the evidence for this along with characteristics for ‘good’ work. We will present how leading biopsychosocial work-health integration models, their principles and supporting evidence, can be applied to clinical care. We will present successful examples of integration of pain care and work, including integrated workplace-based interventions to reduce pain and increase work participation, quality of life and productivity. Because we recognize that IASP draws an audience that is highly diverse, we will present a summary of best practices and principles that can be applied by the participants regardless of country-specific system characteristics. The refresher course will consist of multiple short presentations (5-10 minutes) by each of the 3 speakers, followed by interactive discussions and Q&A moderated by all presenters.