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Pain and medico legal

Pain and Medico-Legal Workshop

Assessing and formulating chronic pain in personal injury cases: consideration of psychological and medical factors.

This course is delivered in partnership with Applied Psychology Solutions.

Outline:

Causation:

  • Differential diagnoses in chronic pain and other psychological presentations; the role of pre existing chronic pain.
  • Diagnosis Vs formulation
  • How to navigate psychogenic discussions in joint case discussions

Condition & Prognosis:

  • Assessing the psychological impact of pain and contextualising this in proportionate terms
  • Treatment recommendations, including costings, venues, and timing of interventions.
  • Psychological prognosis in the context of chronic pain

'Medical Perspectives"

The links between physical injury (or not) and chronic pain and the concept of "Nerves Behaving Badly": The challenges and contradictions that are regularly seen with some example cases. Somatic Symptom Disorder will be explored as a medical diagnosis along with malingering and more general views regarding exaggeration.

“Complex regional pain syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Traumatic events”:

  • CRPS vs somatoform disorders, including diagnostic uncertainty and management
  • Fibromyalgia and a traumatic event:  medical, legal, and prognosis considerations.

Q and A ( all speakers )

Speakers

Dr Hannah Bashforth (Twiddy)

Dr Hannah Bashforth has worked as a clinical psychologist in pain services across the North West for 14 years.  She is currently based within one of the UKs leading NHS tertiary pain management services (Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust) as a senior clinical psychologist and research and audit lead for pain management programmes.  Dr Bashforth holds an honorary post at the University of Liverpool and has strong working affiliations with the University of Manchester where she is responsible for supervising PhD and Clinical Psychology Doctoral research.  Dr Bashforth holds positions on the British Pain Society PMP committee as the national psychology representative, is on the scientific committee for the Pain Relief Foundation, Liverpool and is part of the national committee for PMP guideline revision.  Dr Bashforth is regularly invited to speak and present at events, recently including the British Symposium on Diabetic Neuropathy and The British Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting.  

Dr Bashforth has been working in private practice since 2009 and commenced medicolegal work in 2012.  She completes both personal injury and medical negligence claims for claimant and defence.  Dr Bashforth exclusively focuses upon complex and multi track cases completing in the region of 60 cases per annum.  Dr Bashforth recently published in the British Journal of Pain examining the role of litigation in PMP outcomes.

Dr Tim Johnson

Dr Johnson has been a medical consultant at Salford Royal since 1993. He has been closely involved in developing services for acute and chronic pain both locally and nationally. He has served two terms on the British Pain Society Council and is currently the chair of its Philosophy and Ethics Special Interest Group.

Over the last 26 years he has produced over 1400 medico-legal reports mostly in complex cases concerning personal injury or clinical negligence, both for claimants and defendants. 

Dr. Andreas Goebel

Dr. Goebel works as Honorary Consultant in Pain Medicine at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool. He is also Associated Professor for Pain Medicine at the University of Liverpool and successfully pursues research into the immune causes and treatments for ‘chronic primary pains’; these are pains which have no obvious mechanical cause.

Dr. Goebel holds Chair positions for the British Pain Society’s Science Committee, the special interest group Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the European Task Force on CRPS, and the UK Royal College of Physicians (RCP) guidelines group on both Fibromyalgia, and CRPS.

Andreas Goebel has been working in medicolegal practice for 11 years; he regularly presents at medicolegal meetings, seminars and conferences about implications of recent research findings on medicolegal expert opinion in pain medicine. He has also published 3 articles on medicolegal topics.