How this occupational therapist got into pain management.

Skills to deal with pain should be on every occupational therapists' personal "occupational therapy tool kit". However, based on my observation of occupational therapy in Malaysia, not enough emphasis is being given to learning about the condition of pain and how to address it in our occupational therapy work (there are many other things that I feel occupational therapy education in Malaysia doesn't really teach us to address in our work, but that's for another blog post).

As a Taekwondo athlete and coach (my life before qualifying as an occupational therapy practitioner), dealing with pain and injury was part and parcel of my work. I had to learn:

1) proper movement to prevent injury (important when you've got a last a few rounds of fighting)
2) how to address and care for acute injury (so you can move on to the next match)
3) how to recover properly from injury - caring for injuries in the long run (so that your sporting career can last longer)

So I was already equipped with skills to manage pain and injury even before being an occupational therapist. (Note: not all Taekwondo and sports coaches are trained as such though, and that's a topic for another blog post. If you're a Taekwondo or sports coach who is keen to pick up these skills, I am actually lecturing this topic for Taekwondo Malaysia, the national body - you can feel free to invite me to conduct a course for you and the instructors / coaches in your club / association).

The need for occupational therapists to have skills to deal with pain came rather unexpectedly through my work with clients suffering from obesity-related conditions that eventually led to the GR:IN Lifestyle Modification Approach. When I started working with these people, the idea was that they would mainly be coming to me for weight management. What I didn't really think of (although it would seem pretty obvious!) was that people who were overweight would also come with knee and back pains, and that people with nerve damage from diabetes and stroke would also develop pain, and at the same time they would also have various unhealthy habits that also lead to other sorts of pain (like carpal tunnel syndrome - especially if they have lead a rather sedentary, computer-using lifestyle). There's plenty of people suffering from pain out there (that's why massages are very popular!) but we overlook it too easily!