Miriam Dillon, Physiotherapist and PhD student, University of Queensland

Please join us for the Physiotherapy Pain Association AGM and webinar. We are delighted to welcome Miriam Dillon who will be sharing research undertaken as part of her PhD studies in University of Queensland.

Distress is part of chronic pain experiences and care. However, it is often poorly understood and navigated; seen as a problem or pathology within the patient, or as something in need of down-playing, avoiding or fixing, and separated from pain experiences. In this presentation, I argue that distress is more than an individual pathology, it is relational and shared, meaning that both physiotherapists and patients experience distress and are affected by and affect each other. But more than that, experiences of distress are influenced by many social, cultural, systemic and material forces, all impacting how people act or interact within clinical encounters and beyond. Drawing from my research exploring distress in physiotherapy chronic pain care, I discuss that how distress is understood matters and what this does within chronic pain care. I show that poor understandings and navigation of distress can lead to generating, perpetuating, or amplifying distress for both clinicians and patients. I draw from sociological theories of emotions to offer a (re)conceptualisation of distress, and discuss how this broader understanding of distress can help physiotherapists in understandings pain experiences better and navigate relations of care.