Mini Blog: 2 minutes with...Dr David Rice

It is now less than 4 week until #nzps2015 Annual Scientific Meeting kicks off in Auckland.  Online registrations close in a little over 2 weeks - have you registered yet?

What is your current role/job/position? I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physiotherapy at AUT, a Senior Research Officer in the Health and Rehabilitation Research Institute at AUT and I also work in the multidisciplinary pain service at WDHB, where I help to co-ordinate various research projects related to the prevention, treatment and underlying mechanisms of chronic pain conditions.

How did you get into working in Pain Management? I became particularly interested in pain when I was working towards my PhD and began to read lots about neuroplasticity in the pain system and  concepts like peripheral and central sensitisation. This interest was cemented on a trip to Aalborg, Denmark in 2010, where I was lucky enough to spend some time with some of the best pain researchers in the world. Then, when the WDHB developed its multidisciplinary pain service in 2011, I was appointed to my current position to help to develop a collaborative programme of pain research between the WDHB and AUT University.

What do you hope people might take away from your presentation? That pain directly affects important aspects of motor performance including muscle strength, endurance, co-ordination and maybe even our ability to learn new motor skills. Where possible, it may be much easier to rehabilitate these aspects of motor performance by treating pain effectively first. Where pain cannot be reduced, we may need to employ innovate rehabilitation strategies that try to reverse these deficits in motor control.