Managing chronic pain in the non-specialist setting: a new SIGN guideline
Open accessAbstract
Chronic pain, defined as pain lasting beyond normal tissue healing time (taken to be 3 months),1 is a syndrome that affects a large proportion of the primary care population. It is ‘significant’ in around 14% of UK adults, imposing a heavy burden on the physical and psychosocial health of sufferers, their families and society, at high cost to the healthcare services.2 It was estimated in 2002 that people with chronic pain account for 4.6 million GP appointments in the UK, at an annual cost to the NHS of £69 million, equivalent to the employment of 793 GPs.3 Although many clinical conditions can lead to chronic pain, there are common underlying neurobiological and psychosocial mechanisms, and the impact is generally independent of the clinical aetiology. Effective assessment and treatment of chronic pain therefore means that GPs should have: Unfortunately, none of these requirements is generally in place. Undergraduate training in management of pain is demonstrably minimal, accounting for <1% of programme hours,4 despite its high prevalence and impact. Much of the available evidence for potential interventions is derived from specialist settings or in specific clinical conditions, making it difficult to apply to a general primary care population. Even standard treatments, such as drugs, often lack evidence for effectiveness …
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The SIGN Guideline is a particularly robust tool for primary care physicians.
“The SIGN Guideline is a particularly robust tool for primary care physicians; a summary of its recommendations is in Table 2 [41].”
From Identification and Management of Chronic Pain in Primary Care: a Review (2016) · cites this paper as [41]
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- Authors
- Smith, B. H., Hardman, J. D., Stein, A., & Colvin, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Dundee (GB)
- Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (GB)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- Venue
- British Journal of General Practice
- Published
- 2014-06-30
- Volume
- 64
- Issue
- 624
- Pages
- e462-e464
- ISSN
- 0960-1643 (ISSN-L)
- 1478-5242
- PMC
- PMC4073734
- OpenAlex
- W2165187530
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 0.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- British Journal of General Practice (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Discovery Research Portal (University of Dundee) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine › Pain Management and Opioid Use
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Clinical practice guidelines implementation
- Keywords
- chronic pain, primary care, SIGN guidelines, general practitioners, pain assessment, pain management
- MeSH terms
- Analgesics, Humans, Scotland, Self Care, Practice Guidelines as Topic, Evidence-Based Medicine, General Practice, Chronic Pain
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