Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health

Chronic Pain Statewide Clinical Network

The Chronic Pain SCN has been established to improve the provision of integrated, multidisciplinary care for people with chronic pain.

Page contents

  • Related news
  • Vision and goals
  • Steering committee
  • Current projects and collaborations
  • Related information

Related News

Your voices heard: community shapes optimal system of care for low back pain

We received over 60 respons­es from the com­mu­ni­ty on the pro­posed opti­mal sys­tem of care for low back pain. Your feed­back helped to refine the pro­pos­al, paving the way for a final mod­el that bet­ter address­es com­mu­ni­ty needs.

Read the full story

We’ve launched South Australia’s Pain Research and Innovation Hub to enable the pain community to collaborate to improve care

South Aus­trali­a’s Pain Research and Inno­va­tion Hub is an online col­lab­o­ra­tion tool to that high­lights cur­rent and pre­vi­ous pain-relat­ed research and inno­va­tion projects allow­ing peo­ple to con­nect with oth­ers work­ing on sim­i­lar projects.

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Identifying the enablers to good opioid stewardship

In late 2021, the Statewide Chron­ic Pain Clin­i­cal Net­work host­ed an Opi­oid Round­table to dis­cuss how opi­oids are cur­rent­ly used to man­age pain and con­sid­er what could be done to ensure they are used safe­ly and effectively.

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Developing a model of care to address chronic pain

Devel­op­ment of a com­mu­ni­ty based mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary mod­el of care for ado­les­cents with chron­ic pain and their families.

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Using data to identify improvement areas for chronic pain care

The Statewide Chron­ic Pain Clin­i­cal Net­work lead, Anne Burke, pre­sent­ed on the use of data to iden­ti­fy areas of improve­ment for chron­ic pain at the 2023 Aus­tralian Pain Soci­ety 43rd Annu­al Sci­en­tif­ic Meeting.

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Vision and goals

Vision

A strong, con­nect­ed and inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice which pro­motes evi­­dence-informed pre­ven­tion, ear­ly inter­ven­tion and man­age­ment of pain across the life span for all South Australians.

Goals

The Chron­ic Pain Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work has been estab­lished to improve the pro­vi­sion of inte­grat­ed, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary care for peo­ple with chron­ic pain. It aims to:

  • Fos­ter improved recog­ni­tion and under­stand­ing of chron­ic pain and its effec­tive man­age­ment in the community
  • Fos­ter sys­tems devel­op­ment and trans­par­ent shar­ing of data to bet­ter sup­port cross-sec­­tor ser­vice design, deliv­ery and collaboration
  • Sup­port improve­ments in com­mu­ni­ty, pri­ma­ry health and hos­pi­tal set­tings to ensure time­ly access to evi­­dence-informed care for all South Aus­tralians liv­ing with pain
  • Build an inte­grat­ed Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice that opti­mis­es the expe­ri­ence and out­comes of chron­ic pain management.

Chron­ic Pain Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work Steer­ing Committee

The Steer­ing Com­mit­tees pro­vide over­sight of the devel­op­ment, imple­men­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion of the net­works’ activ­i­ties.

The Steer­ing Com­mit­tees are con­struct­ed to reflect a bal­ance of expe­ri­ence across met­ro­pol­i­tan and coun­try as well as from with­in and out of hos­pi­tal sec­tors. The Steer­ing Com­mit­tee are led by a Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work Lead.

For more infor­ma­tion, refer to Chron­ic Pain Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work Terms of Ref­er­ence TOR (685 KB, PDF)

Professor Anne Burke

Chronic Pain Statewide Clinical Network Lead

Clinical and Health Psychologist

Anne is a reg­is­tered Psy­chol­o­gist with dual endorse­ment in the area of Clin­i­cal and Health Psy­chol­o­gy. With over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the health ser­vice deliv­ery, she has a proven track record of ser­vice inno­va­tion and clin­i­cal­ly focussed research.

Anne is a Past Pres­i­dent of the Aus­tralian Pain Soci­ety (2019−2021) and a Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor with The Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide. She is also the Co-Direc­­­tor of Psy­chol­o­gy and Allied Health Lead — Sur­gery 3 in Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Network.

Anne has a strong inter­est in trans­la­tion­al research and is keen for health sys­tem infor­ma­tion to be lever­aged more effec­tive­ly to sup­port sus­tain­able improve­ments in health­care delivery.

Steering Committee members

Prof Anne Burke

Edu­ca­tion, (inter)national advo­ca­cy, psy­chol­o­gy, pub­lic ser­vices, research

Mr Gre­go­ry LowPsy­chol­o­gist, North­ern Ade­laide Pain Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Service

Dr Jac­in­ta Johnson

Pri­ma­ry care, hos­pi­tal, med­ica­tion safe­ty, pharmacy

Dr Jack­ie Yeoh

Med­i­cine (gen­er­al prac­tice and hos­pi­tal liai­son), shared care

Ms Julianne Flower

Return­ToWork­SA

Mr Marc Apolloni

Ade­laide Pri­ma­ry Health Network

Mr Mark Cox

Phys­io­ther­a­py, pri­vate ser­vices, psychology

Ms Mary Wing

Lived expe­ri­ence, pain sci­ence edu­ca­tion, sup­port groups advocacy

Dr Michael Findlay

Med­i­cine (addic­tion and pain), prison services

Dr Nic­ki Ferencz

WCHN Pae­di­atric Pain Ser­vice, psychology

Mr Noël Markham

SAL­HN Pain Ser­vice, physiotherapy

Ms Susan (Sue) Edwards

Nurs­ing, pain ser­vice coor­di­na­tion, rural

Dr Tim Semple

CAL­HN Pain Ser­vice, med­i­cine (anaes­thet­ics and pain)

Current Projects and Collaborations

Low­ Back Pain

We are estab­lish­ing bet­ter care path­ways for peo­ple suf­fer­ing low back pain to improve time­li­ness and appro­pri­ate­ness of treat­ment. This is being done through greater under­stand­ing of rel­e­vant clin­i­cal and sys­tems fac­tors, as informed by data, cur­rent evi­dence and stake­hold­er input.

Read about the frame­work describ­ing a pro­posed opti­mal sys­tem of care for low back pain in South Australia. 

Opi­oid Stewardship

Work­ing with the Office of the Chief Phar­ma­cist, the Safe­ty and Qual­i­ty Unit in the Depart­ment for Health and Well­be­ing and local hos­pi­tal cham­pi­ons, we are help­ing hos­pi­tals meet the new Aus­tralian Com­mis­sion on Safe­ty and Qual­i­ty in Health Care’s Opi­oid Anal­gesic Stew­ard­ship in Acute Pain Clin­i­cal Care Stan­dard. This aims to ensure opi­oid use is appro­pri­ate­ly man­aged and reviewed to min­imise any risk of harm to patients.

Ado­les­cent Pain Services

Sup­port­ed by grant fund­ing and work­ing with UniSA, Men­zies Cen­tre for Health Pol­i­cy and Eco­nom­ics and oth­er part­ners to co-design a com­mu­ni­ty-based, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary mod­el of care for ado­les­cents with chron­ic pain. This will ensure ado­les­cents have bet­ter access to care in the com­mu­ni­ty and will act as a pilot that can be used nationally.

South Aus­tralia’s Pain Research and Inno­va­tion Hub

The Hub is an online repos­i­to­ry of cur­rent and com­plet­ed pain-relat­ed projects to enable peo­ple to eas­i­ly con­nect around shared inter­ests or issues and learn from work that has already been under­tak­en. We want to help break down silos, reduce dupli­ca­tion of effort and fast-track innovation.

To con­tribute to the repos­i­to­ry or for more infor­ma­tion, see South Aus­trali­a’s Pain Research and Inno­va­tion Hub.

Low Back Pain Clin­i­cal Care Standard

We are also assist­ing the Safe­ty and Qual­i­ty Unit to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties to help hos­pi­tals meet the new Aus­tralian Com­mis­sion on Safe­ty and Qual­i­ty in Health Care’s Low Back Pain Clin­i­cal Care Stan­dard, which describes the stan­dard of care peo­ple with low back pain can expect to receive.


Relat­ed information

Hear from Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Anne Burke about the Chron­ic Pain Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work as part of the 2022 CEIH Con­ver­sa­tion Series

Have a question?

Or want to know more about the Chron­ic Pain Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work? Please email CEIH.​ChronicPain@​sa.​gov.​au.