Pain suffered by NHS patients is not taken seriously enough

"Around eight million people in the UK suffer with chronic pain, with children affected as well as the elderly.

But only 14 per cent of people with pain see a specialist in the area because services do not have the capacity to keep up with demand, the report said.

"Although we now have effective means of tacking both pain and the consequences of pain, services have not kept up with demand and too many people struggle to cope with their symptoms," Sir Liam said in the foreword to his annual report.

All healthcare professionals should be trained in chronic pain, inpatients should have their pain score monitored closely and rapid access pain clinics should be set up nationally, Sir Liam said."

In my own experience, and I am not alone in this, it is not just chronic pain that is not taken seriously enough; agonising acute pain is also not regarded seriously. Not treating acute pain from trauma or infection can lead to chronic ill-health or permanent disability or even death. It is also in itself, of course, a significant cause of chronic pain.

When I had a complicated fracture of my right humerus in 2007 I was admitted as an inpatient at the Northern General Hospital and assured that the operation would be done within a few days at the most. I was in intense and increasing pain because of pressure from the splint. - Pressure is extremely harmful for steroid victims such as I, because of their fragile thin skin and thin-walled, delicate veins. - Despite sustaining significant nerve damage, signalled by the development of pins and needles over the whole of my right hand, and despite MASSIVE swelling of the hand and arm, I was left in this state of increasing agony and damage for nearly a fortnight before the operation was done! The pain is still constant, still severe, and is, indeed, permanent, and substantial ulna nerve damage is causing the hand to waste away. - Taking my pain seriously would have saved me great suffering and needless disabilities, and would have saved the greater cost to the NHS of a month in hospital for me instead of only a few days, would have saved many months of physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and I would not now be dependent on the help of carers every day to shower and get dressed.

No-one has apologised or expressed a word of regret.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk