The Pick of the Bunch!

We’re excited to share some great news – Flippin’ Pain has been shortlisted for not one, but two Picker Experience Network Awards!

The Picker Awards are the only national awards in the UK that focus completely on patient experience. They celebrate teams, services, and projects that go the extra mile to make care better for the people who use it. The awards look for ideas that make a real difference: things that improve communication, make services easier to use, and help patients feel listened to, respected, and cared for.

The two awards we’ve been shortlisted for are:

• The Independent Sector award, acknowledging Flippin’ Pain’s work across the UK, and,
• The Patient Contribution award, where Community Pain Champion Libby Parfitt was nominated for her outstanding work.

Libby has been working with Flippin’ Pain since 2023 and has made a huge impact, sharing her story and advice with attendees at our events, along with our other lived experience experts. She also took a leading role in the creation of Why We Hurt, our new online platform.

We asked Libby to share her thoughts on her time with Flippin’ Pain:

“Fourteen years ago, I had an accident on my way to work. Given how badly it affected me, you’d expect it to be something dramatic, but the truth is almost embarrassingly average: I simply slipped on broken pavement, snapping ligaments in my ankle. It was a painful injury, to be sure, but also a straightforward one that should have resolved within a matter of months. But for some unknown reason it didn’t. Instead of diminishing as my injury healed, my pain got worse and worse and I was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).

“CRPS means that I’m in constant severe pain; after fourteen years, I’ve actually forgotten what it feels like to be pain-free. Pain took so much from me: my mobility, my career, even my relationship. I threw myself at every treatment offered, whether it was medication, physiotherapy, or a surgically implanted Spinal Cord Stimulator. Some helped (a bit), others did nothing, some actually made things worse, but nothing came close to returning me to where I was before that fateful fall. After two years the doctors had nothing left to offer me, and I was the saddest, angriest and lowest I’d ever been.

“The moment that everything changed, that I started putting the pieces of myself back together, was the day I was introduced to modern pain science. I’d believed that my persistent pain was the result of unhealed damage from my accident but that wasn’t the case: I learned that long-term pain is completely different from the acute pain you feel when you stub your toe. The injury to my ankle had long since healed, and the terrible pain I was feeling was the result of an over-sensitised nervous system that viewed even the least threatening things as dangerous.

“It felt like a door had opened: I suddenly understood why the droplets of water from the shower hurt so badly, or why a gentle breeze felt like a knife on my leg. This new understanding of my pain gave me the tools I needed to start putting my life back together, and that’s why I am so excited and proud to be part of Flippin’ Pain. Flippin’ Pain exists to share this modern understanding of pain science with healthcare professionals, pain sufferers and the public UK-wide, aiming to flip the way we think, talk about and treat persistent pain.

“The best thing about Flippin’ Pain, though, is that it’s not just the experts contributing. So many pain sufferers have, at one time or another, felt ignored, misunderstood or even patronised by doctors, friends or family who don’t live with pain – I know I have – and that’s what makes Flippin’ Pain different. The voices of people with lived experience of pain, like me, are just as important as those of the expert pain scientists and healthcare professionals who contribute to the campaign. Everything Flippin’ Pain does, be it delivering live events to GP trainees, writing information leaflets or creating our new video series Why We Hurt, is done with people who have real experience of living with persistent pain at its very heart. It’s not just flippin’ how we talk about pain, it’s flippin’ the way so many of us have felt marginalised in our own treatment.

“Flippin’ Pain wants to ensure that anyone living with persistent pain can come to an event, pick up a leaflet or visit the website and feel seen, understood and validated. We know first-hand that, regardless of the cause, the pain you feel is absolutely real and that you absolutely deserve help and support to live with your pain. We want everyone who is or cares about someone living with long-term pain to feel empowered and educated so they can make truly informed choices about how to manage their pain, about treatment options they might want to explore and, crucially, about how every element of our lives affects the pain we feel.

“So yes, I am both hugely excited and massively proud to be part of Flippin’ Pain. I believe that this campaign truly can flip our thoughts, conversations and beliefs about persistent pain – and that’s because people with pain are at the very centre of it. If you’d like to know more, check out one of our leaflets or attend one of our upcoming events. It could be the moment that your doorway to understanding your pain begins to open.”

Being shortlisted for both awards is a huge honour for our whole team and we’re really pleased that our commitment to involving real experts in persistent pain – the people living with it – has been recognised.

The winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony in October, where we may win the chance to present to a conference – but for us, being recognised in this way is already something to celebrate.

A huge thank you to Libby for her hard work and for sharing her thoughts! You can read more about The Picker Awards on their website.