Healthcare Professionals – Program Overview

Help for patients in pain

Patients in chronic pain have suffered many months or years without pain management strategies, without hope, and often becoming dependent or addicted to opioids. Besides education, these patients require a supportive system to unlearn poor coping habits and lifestyle patterns that contribute to pain. The pain-management coach provides support and guides the patient in learning and implementing self-management strategies.

Chronic-pain syndrome patients have long-held beliefs about pain and mind-body responses to pain that can change with education and support.  The transition takes longer, but clients discover their potential and gain a vision of thriving instead of suffering.

The Take Courage Coaching® philosophy for health coaching:

  • The client learns pain-management skills and strategies, one at a time.
  • The client is guided by the coach to develop goals that support life values and personal strengths—and put them into action.
  • The client continues to utilize learned strategies that work.
  • The client develops and adapts a healthier life style around these strategies.
  • The client is guided to change the strategies that are not working.
  • Together the coach and client track progress and celebrate successes.
  • Weekly goals are reviewed and extended or new ones added in order to pursue and attain health goals.
  • Processes are used to help clients actively identify what might stop them from adhering to treatment recommendations and discover strategies for overcoming these barriers.
Refer a Patient

Published in the Journal of Applied Biobehavioral Research

Abstract: Pain management coaching: The missing link in the care of individuals living with chronic pain

Rebecca Curtis, Joel O’Beso

Read the full article

The most successful participants of Take Courage Coaching® have reclaimed lives once dominated by chronic pain, returned to work and activities, and now rely on medical interventions far less than they do their own pain-management strategies.

Take Courage Coaching® is the partner your patient needs

Step 1

  1. You fill out a referral for for your patient and submit it to TCC.
  2. TCC interviews your patient to ensure they are ready to benefit from the program.
  3. A TCC coach will administer the non-VA Pain Outcomes Questionaire (POQ) in order to understand how your patient’s pain affects daily activities.

Step 2

  1. Your patient will begin weekly half-hour individual (confidential) coaching sessions
  2. Your patient will also join weekly one-hour group coaching sessions
  3. In 6 months, your patient’s TCC coach will re-administer the POQ

Step 3

  1. Your patient will participate in the program for a full year to give him or her time to understand and test new strategies and knowledge.
  2. Your patient’s TCC coach will assist him or her with the transition and discharge process.
  3. Your patient will replace a pain-driven existence with a thriving focus.
  1. Click the button below and Print the referral form
  2. Explain the TCC program to your patient and obtain their signature
  3. FAX or email this form to Take Courage Coaching | FAX: (406) 586-0541
Refer a Patient

Dr. Paul Gorsuch was the neurosurgeon who became Becky’s consultant and cheerleader after her accident. He knew that her pain was one of the most difficult to control and was amazed at how she learned to live without medications. “While she does not have formal medical training, I have found her expertise, knowledge in this area, and ability to apply it to patients to exceed that of many professionals I work with. For patients willing to engage and address a cognitive and general health approach to their pain, there is a very high probability they will have marked improvement,” he stated. The patients he referred to TCC gave the most glowing testimonials for pain relief.

Roy Elam, MD, collaborated with Becky to provide the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative Health staff with coaching skills. He’s inspired by her trustworthiness, dedication to healing and the disciplined program she’s envisioned and created. “The outcome data she is tracking…substantiates the efficacy of TCC,” he notes.

Gary Lusin is a Physical Therapist who has assembled a comprehensive therapy and rehabilitation program in Bozeman, Montana. He partners with Take Courage Coaching on patients who can benefit from additional education and support, and notes that the TCC program “has offered these patients an excellent educational and supportive service to help them move to a higher level of function.”

Jeffrey Hazlewood, MD, is board-certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Pain Management/Pain Medicine. He realized long ago that treating chronic pain patients and weaning them off potentially dangerous opioids requires a multi-disciplinary pain management approach. “So much of chronic pain does not involve an ‘anatomical pain generator’ that causes the nociceptive or neuralgic pain experience,” he says. More important are the “psychological aspects of the pain—the stressors in life, the pre-existing psychological factors, the family and friend support mechanisms, the anger in the work comp cases, the depression and anxiety, the lack of faith and spiritual belief systems, and the pills and procedures we as Doctors dish out on these patients—all lead to the pain experience and, therefore, true chronic pain syndrome. This is a large reason why the multiple surgeries, injections, spinal cord stimulators, and medications often do no good and actually often worsen the condition.” He acknowledges that, since Take Courage Coaching is geared toward offering support for the psychological aspects of pain, he has referred several patients with very positive results. One patient who desperately wanted a second surgery was reluctant to go through coaching, but after 3 months her pain improved 50-75%, she was sleeping and functioning better, and “she now comes to appointments smiling and saying this program gave her back her life. She no longer wants surgery.” This program, Dr. Hazelwood says, “is a critical part of the treatment plan of so many chronic pain patients.”