Using a Whole Health Approach to Build Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Personal Health Plans for Veterans with Chronic Pain
Rena E Courtney, Mary J Schadegg, Rendelle Bolton, Stephanie Smith, Samantha M Harden, Rena E Courtney, Mary J Schadegg, Rendelle Bolton, Stephanie Smith, Samantha M Harden
Abstract
Chronic pain affects over 50 million Americans per year and costs society billions of dollars annually. It is widely accepted that the biomedical model is outdated and research on the biopsychosocial model of chronic pain has increased in recent years, concurrent with investigations into self-management of chronic pain. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has incorporated both of these approaches into their Whole Health System. This work describes the VHA Whole Health System, reviews the literature on alignment between the Whole Health System's Circle of Health and chronic pain, and explains how the VHA Whole Health model may be used as a method for organizing self-management strategies within a personal health plan in the context of chronic pain. Given the infusion of nurses throughout the healthcare system, nurses are in a unique position to champion this biopsychosocial-spiritual approach to care.
Conflict of interest statement
Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Published by Elsevier Inc.
Source: PubMed