Making a referral to chronic pain clinics for general practitioners

Listed below are some guiding principles when selecting an appropriate specialist chronic pain service.

Metropolitan Sydney

1. For continuity of care, patients and GPs are advised to select the nearest pain clinic to their residential address.
   Patients may choose alternate clinics. GPs may recommend a specific clinic based on the type of service required or the specialty provided by the clinic eg, burns, HIV, Spinal Cord Injury, pain management implantable devices or interventions, high intensity pain management programmes, paediatric services. See Service Directory for more information.

Rural NSW

1. For continuity of care, patients are advised to select the nearest pain clinic to their residential address
2. Access to specialty supporting clinics in metropolitan Sydney/Newcastle may be required
3. Patients may choose alternate clinics. GPs may recommend a specific clinic based on the type of service required or the specialty provided by the clinic as per examples above. See Service Directory for more information.

Children wishing to access chronic pain services

1. For continuity of care, patients are advised to select the nearest pain clinic to their residential address.
2. Access to specialty supporting clinics in metropolitan Sydney may be required.
3. New referrals are accepted to these centres up until the 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Service flows

NSW Pain Services: Locations (PDF)

Children's services

Notes

1. Multidisciplinary pain clinic
2. Multidisciplinary pain clinic accredited with the Faculty of Pain Medicine
* Adult regional pain clinics

Adult Service Flows