Work and pain: A lifespan development approach

From childhood to millennials and beyond, it is essential we take a life-course approach to occupation and work when in pain. Written by experts in the field, Work and pain: A lifespan development approach provides an authoritative summary and analysis of the relationship between all forms of occupation and pain.

Divided into three sections, 'Foundations', provides a critical account of the nature of work and of pain. The next section, 'Investigations', analyses the bi-directional relationships between children living with chronic pain and parents; between being a child in pain and schooling; what it is to be a millennial in pain; the implications of pain which is determined to be occupational in origin; and enabling a life lived well with pain as one ages. The final section, 'Interventions', critically reviews what individuals can change, what workplaces can do, and how governments can innovate to try to maximise workability for people living with pain in the context of current working practices.

Work and pain: A lifespan development approach investigates and guides the reader on understanding how and why people seek to be occupied, and how we can maximise their social and personal involvement when living with ongoing pain, suggesting ways forward in research, practice, and policy.

Elaine Wainwright, Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology, Bath Spa University, and Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Pain Research, University of Bath, UK,Christopher Eccleston, Professor of Medical Psychology, Centre for Pain Research, The University of Bath, UK

Elaine Wainwright is Senior Lecturer in Applied Psychology at Bath Spa University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Pain Research, University of Bath. She is interested in intersections between pain and employment in its broadest sense across the lifespan. Her PhD examined the process of sickness certification for people living with chronic pain. Elaine has published peer reviewed journal articles from her doctorate and carried out commissioned research into whether evidence based practice can improve sickness certification rates from work. She is currently working on funded research looking at reducing work attrition for people in pain and has an overlapping research interest in improving working conditions for professionals. Elaine is also working with research teams investigating whether schoolchildren in pain have different career-related worries from those not in pain, and what we know about resilience for workers in pain. She is a chartered psychologist.

Christopher Eccleston is Professor of Medical Psychology at the University of Bath where he directs the Centre for Pain Research. He is particularly interested in evidence based medicine, innovation in treatments for chronic pain, paediatric chronic pain, and the use of communication technology in psychological medicine. In 2016 he published a psychology of physical sensation called 'embodied' which explores what we know about all proprioception and interoception with a focus on how people try to make sense of their embodied experience. He is particularly interested in the development of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams for the management of complex refractory pain, and how to re-develop ideas of the pain clinic. In 2018 he published a review of pain services across Europe and is keen to develop novel models of care and new ways to access expertise.