​​Dagmar Hempel​​

Physiotherapist, Pain Management Service, Health NZ Te Whatu Ora - Capital Coast & Hutt Valley, Wellington, NZ​

Dagmar has been a Physiotherapist and Team Leader of the Wellington Regional Pain Service for over 16 years.  She trained and worked in Germany and London, before moving to New Zealand and settling into chronic pain management and all the changes, developments, progress and disappointments associated with its research as well as clinical practice.  Fascinated by the biological processes involved in pain, she is committed to helping make sense of chronic pain for those affected by it.

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​Making Sense of Pain - How to explain Persistent Pain

​Pain is intuitively understood as a sign of something being wrong in the body.  This intuition relies on appropriate processes of the Sensory Nervous System and works well a lot of the times.  However, when pain persists beyond the time of expected recovery, the deeply felt intuition that “there is something wrong” does not go away.

It is immensely important to communicate the difference between acute and chronic pain, to provide assurance about structures that have been investigated and lack of pathological findings.  Unfortunately, assurances, like “there is nothing wrong”, or explanations that focus on the function of the ‘brain ‘are understood as dismissal, lack of interest or even not being believed and negatively impact the therapeutic relationship.  
Over many years of delivering ‘pain education’ we have found it helpful to explore the Sensory Nervous System more broadly and to discover many general rules and patterns that help making sense of chronic pain –a disease of the Sensory Nervous System.