Everett Clinic aims to better treat pain

  • By Deanna Duff For The Herald Business Journal
  • Friday, October 23, 2015 4:06pm
  • Business

Peter Sessum wakes up and goes to sleep with a constant arthritic ache in his wrists. When pain flairs in his knees and hips, the 43-year-old Army veteran sometimes finds himself unable to walk. His military service included airborne jumps and infantry marches shouldering upward of 75 pounds. Chronic pain from injuries is a constant reminder.

“I’ve already spent 13 days in the hospital this year with the worst pain I’ve ever experienced,” says the Mountlake Terrace resident who also suffers from ulcerated colitis. “It’d be great to have someone overlooking pain maintenance, foreseeing problems and actually preventing them.”

The Everett Clinic is poised to become a regional leader in pain management with its just-launched Comprehensive Pain Center. Open to all Everett Clinic patients, interdisciplinary collaboration encourages better identification and treatment of pain issues ranging from arthritis to migraines, back and neck problems, injuries, fibromyalgia and more.

“We see the unfortunate consequences of patients suffering from chronic pain and how it severely impacts their quality of life,” says Dr. Dianna Chamblin, facility medical director for The Everett Clinic Comprehensive Pain Center and director of Occupational Health and Education. “I know we can and will do better for our patients.”

A 2011 report by the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academies of Sciences, estimated that 100 million adults in the U.S. experience chronic pain.

Efforts to launch The Everett Clinic Comprehensive Pain Center began in 2014.

The team sought local input from experts at Group Health Cooperative and the University of Washington Medical Center, home to the nation’s first multidisciplinary pain clinic founded in 1961.

The Everett model includes two physicians specializing in pain management, a clinical psychologist and physical therapist. They will closely collaborate through regular, in-person team conferences. Treatment at The Everett Clinic model will be broad. Possibilities include prescription medications, individualized exercise programs, holistic methods and an increased emphasis on mental and emotional aspects.

“Psychology plays a large part on top of what the patient is going through physically,” says Bill Kelleher, senior clinical psychologist with the Pain Center. “It’s almost impossible for a person dealing with chronic pain to avoid some level of depression.”

Kelleher served 22 years in the United States Air Force working with injured soldiers. He helped establish pain management programs at numerous Air Force medical centers and worked as a civilian psychologist at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Both individual and group therapy sessions are offered. Specifically, techniques such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy helps patients refocus on the present moment and away from pain and loss.

“Sometimes something relatively simple makes a difference,” Kelleher says. “There was a woman with back pain and the first thing her husband asked every morning was how she felt. It came from good intentions, but unbeknownst to him it put more attention on the pain. Instead, he learned to kiss her on the forehead as a way of showing he cared.”

Another primary goal of the Comprehensive Pain Center is addressing the overuse of opioids — prescription painkillers such as fentanyl and OxyContin.

According to Dr. Gary Franklin, medical director at Washington State Department of Labor &Industries, prior to the late 1990s, opioids were primarily used for severe situations such as cancer, end of life and acute injuries such as fractures.

“In Washington in 1999, lobbying efforts led to new rules that said no doctor would be sanctioned for prescribing any amount of opioids. They could hand out bags of it and the medical commission couldn’t do anything,” Franklin says. “Many of the advocates were surrogates for drug companies.”

Peter Sessum witnessed the results firsthand. Multiple doctors prescribed painkillers, which resulted in overlapping prescriptions.

“I never use all of what’s given to me and stop as quickly as I can. I don’t want to deal with the long-term risks associated with narcotic drugs,” Sessum says.

A 2015 National Institutes of Health study cited a high addiction risk and insufficient evidence that opioid use is effective for treating chronic pain.

“A host of complications are related to these classes of medications. They can create other side effects such as increased falls, depression, sexual dysfunction and severe constipation,” Chamblin says. “There may be a role for continuing opioids in some patients (at the new center), but we’re hoping to use other interventions when possible and appropriate.”

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