Add a social worker to your practice to help manage patients’ pain, speaker says
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Primary care physicians and rheumatologists who feel overwhelmed with responsibilities should consider adding a clinical social worker to their practice to address their patients’ pain, an expert said.
“We all want to find ways to improve the quality of care to retain patients,” Wenona Y. Andress, LCSW, a clinical social worker and therapist in Lubbock, Texas, said during her virtual PAINWeek presentation. “I found in working with pain patients is that they all want a cure. With chronic pain patients, we know there's not going to be a cure, so I work with them in in helping them find a way to manage their pain.”
Her poster provided eight tasks that clinical social workers can perform to lighten the workload of PCPs and rheumatologists:
- utilize pre-screening tools (eg, the Pain Catastrophizing Scale);
- screen for substance use disorders;
- screen for adverse childhood experiences;
- assess patients for psychiatric emergencies and provide referrals;
- provide brief crisis counseling;
- offer individual counseling (eg, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness and meditation, and motivational interviewing);
- organize and host pain management support groups; and
- provide case management and referrals to mental health specialists and social service agencies.
According to Andress, some of these responsibilities align with HHS’ Interagency Pain Management Task Force recommendations.
The task force “identified five categories that required improvement, two of which include behavioral approaches and complementary and integrative health,” her poster stated. “They stated that effective management of acute and chronic pain should be based on a biopsychosocial model of care.”
Her poster continued: “a physician desiring to hire a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)-supervisor has hit the jackpot. An LCSW supervisor allows the clinic to recruit [Licensed Master Social Worker] candidates who need clinical hours, thus increasing clinical services. An LCSW-supervisor can supervise Bachelor and Master [level] case managers for your practice who can do referrals. This is a win-win for [clinical] provision in rural areas.”
Andress’ poster also noted that accredited versions of multidisciplinary pain management programs already exist in some university hospital settings and Veterans Affairs’ health centers.