Use these guiding principles when selecting an appropriate specialist chronic pain service.
Selecting a service
For continuity of care, patients and general practitioners are advised to select the nearest pain clinic to their residential address.
Patients may choose alternate clinics.
General practitioners may recommend a specific clinic based on the type of service required or the specialty provided by the clinic, e.g. burns, HIV, spinal cord injury, pain management implantable devices or interventions, high intensity pain management or paediatric services. For rural patients, these specific clinics may be in Sydney or Newcastle. The service directory has details of available programs.
Use the service flows to find the nearest clinic.
Children’s services
New referrals are accepted to these centres up until the child’s 16th birthday. Once accepted, the young person will be managed by the children's service and transitioned over at an appropriate time (if still needed) to adult services by their 19th birthday.
A small minority of children who have not yet turned 16, but are living out of home and independent may also be considered suitable for referral to an adult service.
Some children for whom travel to a specialised children's pain service would be onerous, will be referred to their local pain service in the first instance for assessment.