William Osler advised clinicians to listen to patients because their accounts often reveal the diagnosis. The search for meaningful insights into chronic pain now centers on patients' lived experience, yielding impressive results. Health care providers encourage patients to engage as partners in treatment. Research programs include people with lived experience—patients, family members, caregivers—on committees guiding pain studies. Pain scientists advocate prioritizing studies that begin with real-world pain reports and then apply laboratory methods. Reverse translational research starts with patient experience and employs brain imaging and blood tests correlated with symptoms and self-reports. The goal is targeted, effective pain-management solutions.
Over a hundred years ago, William Osler, the Canadian physician and founding influence on modern medicine and medical education, is said to have instructed his students to "listen to the patient. Quite often he is telling you the diagnosis." Today, the urgent search for meaningful insights into chronic pain has given that idea a new relevance, with impressive results. Health care providers now encourage patients to engage as partners in the treatment process.
Pain scientists are calling for a dramatic change that puts greater emphasis on the studies that draw first from people's real-life pain experience, then follows up with lab-based research to develop targeted solutions for effective pain management. Reverse translational research begins with the patient's real-world experience and then tries to decipher the mechanisms through brain imaging and blood tests, correlated with the patient's symptoms and self-reports.
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