Join Saurab Sharma discussing the One Thing he wants people challenged by pain to know about. Explore the current state of pain science research and clinical practice in this straight-to-the-point interview with Saurab.
About Dr Saurab Sharma
Dr Saurab Sharma is a postdoctoral research fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia and the University of New South Wales, supported by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) John J. Bonica Fellowship. His research includes developing global strategies for improving musculoskeletal health and developing and testing assessment methods and interventions for pain. Prior to commencing his PhD in 2017, Saurab worked as a musculoskeletal physiotherapist and lecturer in Nepal for a decade. Here is his research profile.
Transcript
What’s the one thing that you want people challenged by pain to know?
So yeah, there are many things about pain that people should know. But if I have to pick one thing, I would say that it’s very important for everybody to know that pain is a unique experience. So every people experience pain differently. They have their own shared experience, based on past experience from childhood and various other things that shaped their pain experience. What I want to say is that pain is personal. It’s your own, and it’s unique to yourself or one individual.
Why is it a unique experience?
Pain as a concept, it’s very subjective and it’s shaped by various things. So these various things could be various biopsychosocial factors. And what I’m really interested in is social factors. So and it’s most commonly ignored, but very important as well. So social factors such as, where we grow our family, our friends, our workplace. Everything such as these could shape, our pain experience. And many people go through different kinds of childhood adversities and experience, it could be happy, sad, we might have had a physical injuries or mental trauma. So that can also shape our pain experience.T there are various factors around culture. Culture itself is influenced by many other things. It’s so complex, and all of these kinds of influence pain, and to name a few, like sex or gender are cultural factors. That influences pain to some extent, and socioeconomic status that comprises of education, income, and occupation. And all of these play a huge role in persistence of pain. And as I said earlier, previous experience and memories about pain can also either increase or decrease the meaning of pain and also the intensity of pain. So it’s very, very complex and very individual.
Is there anything that you’re currently working on that you want to share about?
Yeah, I’ve been working around a few things around culture and pain, and how culture may influence pain. And the other thing that I was working on was developing patient resources for pain, trying to call it a story bank, and to have a collection of stories from real people from our community, or from community around the globe, who have problems related to pain, and use those real stories in educating people about pain. And it would be very nice to have that as a book to read, or a series of YouTube videos or podcasts and use it in various channels so that people can access them openly throughout the globe. So that’s the goal.
Fantastic. I think we’re a big fan of bite sized education here
Josh, it’s a pleasure. Thank you.