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Researchers in Aberdeen have embarked on a four-year study to help older people manage their experience of physical pain.
Around half of over-65s live with persistent, chronic pain, which can isolate people socially and worsen their quality of life.
The University of Aberdeen’s Centre of Academic Primary Care has received funding from Lifelong Health and Wellbeing, a cross-council scheme that supports research concerned with healthy ageing and well being in older people.
The study is known as Eopic: Engaging with Older People in developing and designing Interventions for the management of Chronic pain, and will be carried out in phases in collaboration with the University of Teesside in Dundee and Glasgow Caledonian University.
Chronic pain is defined as pain which lasts longer than three months.
The researchers are now speaking to older people in and around Aberdeen who experience chronic pain, including those who attend the city’s pain clinic.
The university’s Dr Pat Schofield, director for the Centre for Advanced Studies in Nursing, which is part of the Centre of Academic Primary Care, said: “The overall aim of the study is to achieve a deeper understanding of the consequences of ageing with chronic pain. Our findings will enable us to develop innovative ways in which older people have the knowledge, skills and confidence to live independently at home while self managing their pain.”
Copyright Press Association 2010
Centre of Academic Primary Care
