Chronic pain is a pain in the neck, sometimes literally.
Unlike the short-term acute pain from twisting an ankle, chronic pain – as the name suggests – can linger indefinitely.
Telling a patient that they might have pain for a long time – maybe forever – is hard message for any doctor to deliver.
Many patients will assume that there is now a fix for everything – a tablet or treatment that will take away the pain. The idea of learning to live with some level of discomfort is abhorrent.
For retired Perth businessman Geoff Churack, who was struggling with ongoing leg pain in the early 2000s, a lack of awareness about managing chronic pain – even among the GPs he was seeing – left him frustrated.
Geoff, who is on this month’s cover, wanted to do something about it, providing $1 million in 2013 to set up the Churack Chair in Chronic Pain Education and Research at Fremantle’s University of Notre Dame.
New generations of doctors will now get a much-needed insight into managing the thousands of chronic pain patients they will see coming through their doors in the years ahead.
A decade later, with the early work starting to pay off, Geoff and his family have now dug deeper, providing another $4 million to ensure the work they started can continue in perpetuity.
Geoff has always known that while he might not personally benefit from the research and education, many other people might.
New generations of doctors will now get a much-needed insight into managing the thousands of chronic pain patients they will see coming through their doors in the years ahead.
Kudos to the Churack family.