Professor Lorimer Moseley AO

DSc PhD FAAHMS FACP HonFFPMANZCA HonMAPA
Director, IIMPACT in Health, Professor of Clinical Neurosciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia​

Lorimer is Bradley Distinguished Professor, Foundation Chair in Physiotherapy and Director of IIMPACT in Health at the University of South Australia. His main interests are persistent pain and other protective feelings. His research group investigates pain in humans, from cognitive and behavioural experiments to clinical trials and implementation studies. He has authored over 380 scientific articles and seven books. His contributions to the science of pain, to the treatment of persistent pain, to pain education, and to public outreach, have been recognised by honours in 13 countries. He has delivered keynote lectures at world congresses in six fields. In 2017, he founded the non-profit Pain Revolution and in 2020 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, that country’s second highest civilian honour, for ‘distinguished served to humanity at large in the fields of pain and its management, science communication, education and physiotherapy.’ He lives and works on Kaurna Land in Adelaide, South Australia.
 

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Improving Patient Pain Education: What Should We Target and How Might We Do It Better?

​There is building evidence that contemporary pain education, which targets a deeper understanding of ‘how pain works’ and what can be done about it, has positive effects on several clinical variables. There is also building evidence that many patients don’t engage with it or like it, that many health professionals don’t like doing it, that even well trained health professionals have learning success rates of around 50%, and that many health professionals don’t consider education an intervention, despite it being first line care in most clinical guidelines for chronic pain internationally. These significant barriers have triggered substantial transformation of modern pain education over the last six years. Consumer perspectives have identified pain science concepts that really matter; education science has shifted the guiding frameworks from behaviourist to constructivist and the format from didactic instruction to active and embodied learning.  I will also discuss the public outreach initiatives centred around pain education and the potential role in clinical settings of innovations such as virtual reality.