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If you are living with chronic pain from a condition such as fibromyalgia, you should certainly be asking yourself how to find good pain management.
Fibromyalgia causes chronic pain that’s often so severe it affects your quality of life. So finding a way to manage your pain is a vital part of living with this condition.
The options for pain management often reflect your lifestyle and your own personal choices. Some people with chronic pain choose acupuncture, yoga, relaxation, meditation or pharmaceutical interventions to offer relief. This article reviews the more standardized medical responses to chronic pain — finding a doctor or pain clinic run by credentialed physicians.
How Do I Find Pain Management Near Me?
Your family doctor is a good place to start when seeking an approach to deal with chronic pain. You should always work closely with your doctor when it comes to managing the symptoms of fibromyalgia, including pain. But if you feel that you need more specialized treatment, you can often ask your doctor for a referral to a pain management doctor. Doctors use many different criteria in choosing a specialist to refer patients to, so make sure you talk to your doctor to see what reasons are applied to the choices of specialists chosen for you.
In addition, ask your friends and family members if they know of a good pain clinic. They may be able to refer you to a clinic that they have visited themselves and give you a review of what their experience was like.
Next, search the internet for a pain clinic. Many clinics have patient reviews that will give you an idea of whether the clinic is worth your time.
Finally, if you’re in the US, the federal government has a great tool called “physician compare” on the Medicaid website. You can enter your location and it will list doctors in your area. In contrast, you can also use the same site to search doctors by specialization, including chronic pain management. The site will tell you whether or not the doctor accepts Medicaid.
You should be careful to only visit reputable clinics. Fraudulent pain management clinics do exist. Some doctors prescribe unnecessary treatments so that they can bill Medicaid for the procedures. And some clinics are known as “pill mills.” These clinics hand out opioid prescriptions with little oversight in order to make money off of people who are addicted to prescription medications.
Carefully screen any clinic before you go and make sure that they are legitimate and have success treating pain of the type you may be experiencing.
Why Should You Visit A Pain Clinic?
Most people begin by getting a diagnosis from their family doctor or a general practitioner.
But medicine is a field that is extremely expansive field. New medical treatments and therapies are created every day. That’s why it helps to find a doctors who specializes in treating the type of condition you might have. That allows gives them a better chance of keeping up with changes in treatment options.
Treating Fibromyalgia
Pain clinics can offer the most current treatments for fibromyalgia. For instance, they can prescribe SSRIs. These drugs work by raising the levels of serotonin in the blood, which can help manage your pain. And they are some of the most commonly prescribed treatments for fibromyalgia.
And although there are many issues surrounding the prescription of opioids, many patients rely on them to manage their chronic pain. Doctors at pain clinics can help you manage your opioid prescriptions and use them safely.
Finally, many pain clinics can help you with alternative treatments like massage and physical therapy, which have been shown to help manage the pain of fibromyalgia.
So, what do you think? Have you visited a pain clinic to manage your fibromyalgia? What was your experience like? Let us know in the comments.
Resources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1466676/
https://www.medicare.gov/physiciancompare/
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdal/pr/pain-management-doctor-arrested-health-care-fraud-cases
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-a-pill-mill/
https://www.healthpoint.co.nz/gps-accident-urgent-medical-care/what-is-a-gp-general-practitioner/
https://www.kaptest.com/study/mcat/
https://www.webmd.com/fibromyalgia/features/alternative-treatments-for-fibromyalgia#1
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