Lesson series
Injury and Healing:
Redefining Terms
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By now you know that I am a big advocate of pain science in rehabilitation and strongly believe that it is the best way to engage in a biopsychosocial approach to treatment. However, a while ago I noticed that I was having a negative reaction to the words” injury” and “healing” when interacting with patients. Previously, I was quick to “correct” someone that pain does not mean damage, when they would describe an injury, to start using a pain science approach from the beginning. However, I began to realize that down-playing injury for a term like “sensitivity” may help some people, but it might also alienate others… such a strategy may not legitimize our clients experience, as well as under emphasize the body's natural ability to heal! To really connect with our patients, and build therapeutic alliance, we must speak their language.
This presented a problem for me as most patients describe injury, and desire healing; and yet I couldn’t connect with them on this primary level. And without connecting with my patients, I would be missing the boat on using a biopsychosocial approach to its fullest (great blogs on that topic here). So, what was I to do? Force everyone to see my point of view… not likely effective. Instead I had to re-define my terms of “injury” and “healing” to speak with my patients in their terms while at the same time find a way to present pain science concepts. While I fear this may be a self-indulgent blog, my hope is that it will help you build a robust therapeutic alliance with your patients, while integrating pain science concepts to address the “bio” and the “psychosocial” in your treatment.
Let’s define injury.
Webster’s dictionary defines injury as:
- An act that damages or hurts : wrong
- Violation of another's rights for which the law allows an action to recover damages.
- Hurt, damage, or loss sustained” (ref)
The urban dictionary defines it as:
1. Damage done to a body part that results in it being broken.
Either way you slice it people most often associate injury with damage, pain, or being broken. To be able to connect with patients, these must be in our concept of injury. But pain science tells us that pain and damage are not the same thing. The best definition of pain is provided by the international association for the study or pain (IASP):
“Pain is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.”
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