The Addiction Free Pain Management® (APM) System provides a way to deal with the problem of chronic pain and co-existing disorders and succeed in providing people with effective chronic pain management so they can lead a higher quality of life. The system is designed to work with (not on) the whole person—Biological, Psychological, Social and Spiritual.

The result is a unique integration of treatment methods that combine proper medication management and cognitive behavioral interventions along with nonpharmacological (non-medication based) modalities.  The APM™ approach leads to patients obtaining pain relief, while lowering or eliminating their risk of addiction or relapse as well as reducing or eliminating problems from other mismanaged coexisting disorders.

I want to list below the Seven Point Clinical Philosophy of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System that I developed for our APM™ Centers of Excellence. I would like to suggest that all treatment programs develop similar philosophies for effective pain management.

1. We believe that each patient’s report of pain is valid. Our approach to assisting the patient is driven by this basic assumption.
2. We treat each patient with dignity, acknowledging their perception of pain and accepting their cultural, spiritual, and psychological values as their reality.
3. Our primary goal is to assist the patient in wisely and skillfully managing their pain experiences, based upon the patient’s stated desire for pain relief.
4. Given the nature of the setting—working with patients addicted to mood altering chemicals—addressing both patients’ pain and their addiction becomes a delicate balance. We will therefore work to complete a comprehensive pain assessment with reassessment at regular intervals taking into account a patient’s progress. This can only be accomplished using a multidisciplinary team approach.
5. Pain will be a component of the patient’s interdisciplinary treatment plan. We educate all clinicians to assure competence in dealing with the addicted patient whose treatment is complicated by coexisting pain issues.
6. Our role is that of advocate for the patient to assist him/her in achieving their recovery goal while providing relief of pain.
7. We have a committee for ongoing examination of our work treating patients with acute and/or chronic pain. If we determine that we are unable to adequately and safely treat a patient with co-occurring pain issues we will offer resources to the patient that may better address his/her pain needs.

To learn more about using a multidisciplinary approach for chronic pain management please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain or living with chronic pain yourself and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing the pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to listen to this interview.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.