Pain Service - Attending Pain Management Appointments

We’re giving you this information because we’ve arranged some individual pain management sessions for you.

Our responsibilities to you include making every effort that:

• You are seen by the same person each time you attend
• Your sessions begin on time
• Your sessions are free from interruptions
• Your sessions are not cancelled or changed by us unless it is absolutely unavoidable

Demand for pain management sessions is high. Unfortunately, we lose a lot of sessions when people cancel at short notice, or don't arrive for their appointment.

This means that:

1. There are longer waiting times for all
2. Treatment is disrupted because it is harder to make progress when sessions are irregular

To avoid these problems, we ask you to:

• Give your treatment the same high priority that we do, and make every effort to attend even if you are having a bad pain day or if anything else happens
• Always contact us if you are not able to attend your appointment, as this helps us to use that time more effectively
• If you know that you will be unable to attend, try to give us at least three working days’ notice. This might allow us to offer your appointment to another patient and not waste clinical time. Please contact the Pain Centre reception via telephone on 0161 206 4002 rather than texting us

We know that there are times when people are simply unable to attend, and we will try to be flexible at these times.

However, if people miss or cancel multiple appointments, we may either have to:

1. Discharge them from our caseload, or
2. Return them to the bottom of our waiting list in order to be fair to other people who are waiting.

If you have any questions about this leaflet, please ask the staff to explain it or contact us on 0161 206 4002.