Refer a patient to the Pain Control service

This page includes information on how to refer a patient to the Chronic Pain Management service at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) as well as the Clinician Telephone Support Service.Please read guidance on our conditions we treat prior to referral. If you are not sure whether a referral is appropriate, please use the Clinician Telephone Support Service (see below).

• Patient must be 16 years or under*
• Pain that has lasted for at least three months
• Referral must be made by (on the behalf of) a Paediatrician or Hospital Consultant
• Patients must remain primarily under the care of a local Consultant (preferably this should be a Paediatrician but could be any specialist consultant managing the patients care)

How to refer:

We require as much information as possible about the patient and their pain problem in order to fully consider the referral. Please see the below information that we require:

• Full patient name, address and contact details
• Reason for referral to the chronic pain clinic
• History of the presenting pain issue
• Past medical history (full details where possible, not just relating to pain)
• Current medication and details of medication previously tried
• Details of current and previous physical therapy
• Details of current and previous psychology/mental health involvement
• Other therapies/treatments
• Identified clinician with overall responsibility of care**
• Details of other health professionals involved in care
• Information regarding any social care or child protection issues (both current and previous if relevant)

We will need the full contact details for the responsible clinician to be provided at referral to the service. We will also require a direct contact telephone number and an e-mail address for the referrer (if this is different to the responsible clinician).

Unfortunately, failure to provide any of the required details may result in a delay to the patient being offered an assessment whilst we contact the referrer for more information. In some cases the referral may be rejected completely.

Although referrals are generally only accepted from hospital consultants and consultant paediatricians, in exceptional circumstances GPs may be able to refer directly to the service provided the referral is supported by a responsible consultant who will remain involved in the patients care. We will accept referral in the form of a clinic letter (as long as all the required information is included) or as an attachment to a referral request letter using our referral proforma (click on link below).

Referrals should be addressed to ‘clinical Lead for Pain Management and can be sent in the following ways:

• By post

• By fax:

• By email

(Please be aware that this email is a generic hospital referral email and referrals will be forwarded on to our service when received).

If you would like to discuss the appropriateness of a referral or find out more information about what our service could offer, please use the Clinician Telephone Support Service (below).

The Clinician Telephone Support Service (CTSS) is a free service for healthcare professionals to access guidance from the Pain Team at GOSH in order to determine whether a referral or continued local care is appropriate. The CTSS is designed to help clinicians decide whether their patients require more specialist pain management or whether their current care can be optimised and continued.

The Service is open to healthcare professionals looking after children and young people only. If you are a young person with chronic pain, or a carer or parent of such a person, please speak to your current care provider to find out how to access pain management services.

Please read the following instructions to access the CTSS.

• The service is open to healthcare professionals looking after children and young people only.
• The CTSS can be accessed by e-mailing ctss-pain@gosh.nhs.uk.
• Please include in your e-mail the following information (Please be aware that this email is not secure so do not include large amounts of patient identifiable information):
  • Your name and designation
  • Your contact telephone number (a direct number or mobile is preferable)
  • The name/initials and date of birth of the child or young person in respect of whom the enquiry is being made
  • A brief summary of the enquiry

Note that for clinical and confidentiality reasons, until a patient referral is accepted by our service we cannot provide detailed management advice on individual cases. However, we will discuss your current management approach for the patient with you and provide advice and recommendations for how best to proceed.

Information submitted to the GOSH Pain Control Service through the CTSS will be stored securely and confidentially. It will be used for monitoring the use, quality and outcomes of the CTSS.