Instructor:  Annie O’Connor and Mellisa Watson

This two-day course focuses information critical to the assessment and treatment of patients dominated by Central Nervous System (CNS) Pain Mechanisms.  The course will aid the sub grouping of CNS mechanisms into Central Sensitivity, Affective and Motor / Autonomic mechanisms. Incorporating the scientific literature and strategies for Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Motivational Interviewing (MI) approaches promoting when best utilized for each pain sub group.  This course will present specific patient motivational pain science education approaches, specific functional exercise prescriptions and CNS sensorimotor retraining. Outlining Chapter Six, Seven & Eight of “A World of Hurt:  A Guide to Classifying Pain”, pain clinicians will learn how to assess and classify CNS pain mechanisms including, Central Sensitivity, Affective and Motor / Autonomic utilizing psychometric measures, outcome measures, CNS sensory and motor evaluations. This course will focus on specific interventions of pain science patient education topics; patient readiness questionnaire, motivational interviewing strategies, graded exposure functional return and sensorimotor retraining for each CNS dominated pain mechanism. Video, paper cases and live patient demonstrations (when available) will aid application to each clinician’s practice by understanding the importance of the “words” and “moves” necessary to reverse CNS pain mechanisms.

This course has been approved by the Illinois Physical Therapy Association for 14.5 CE hours. Approval #647-7729

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