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Igniting the Spark: An ISPP Early Career Award Lecture

Lisa-Marie Rau


25 October 2024


PRF News

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The International Symposium on Pediatric Pain (ISPP) Early Career Award honors exceptional research in pediatric pain in the first twelve years since the nominee’s achieved their advanced degree.

Editor’s note: During the International Symposium on Pediatric Pain 2023 (ISPP), five pain researchers participated in the PRF-ISPP 2023 Correspondents Program – made possible by generous contributions from Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) and the Centre for Pediatric Pain (CPPR). As we prepare for ISPP 2025 – taking place 17-20 June 2025 in Glasgow, UK – we’re taking a look back at some highlights of ISPP 2023, and some of the people that made them possible.

The ISPP 2023 Early Career Award was given to Dr. Kathryn (Katie) Birnie, a Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Birnie and her research team, Partnering for Pain, focus on patient partnerships in pain research and improving pain prevention and management. As the Associate Scientific Director of the Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) network, she aims to make knowledge about pain accessible for everyone and thus improve evidence-based pain management.

Igniting the spark

Birnie’s lecture, “Igniting the Spark: How People with Lived Experience Have Transformed My Career,” began by emphasizing that collaboration with patient partners is essential to pediatric pain research, healthcare, and policy initiatives. She expressed that it’s our responsibility as researchers to share our knowledge with the people we treat, listen to the public’s concerns, and investigate topics they believe are important. She stressed that the field of pediatric pain research cannot meaningfully advance unless the voice of the public is brought into the conversation. Otherwise, we risk repeating the same mistakes, upholding harmful practices, and reinforcing systems that do not work.

After performing a variety of research projects on clinically significant pain and how it can be assessed, Birnie’s main conclusion was that even if multiple children report the same level of pain on a pain intensity scale, the threshold of when they would ask for help can vary immensely between individuals. Therefore, sole reliance on a scale to guide acute pain management can ultimately prove harmful to individuals. People with lived experience must be given a voice to advocate for themselves, and healthcare must be personalized to meet individual needs.

Pain research that’s inclusive of patient partners and their families helps to ensure that the end result is relevant and useful to the broader public. An excellent example of this is Birnie’s project to identify top priorities for pediatric chronic pain research and care. As a team of researchers, healthcare professionals, and patient partners, Partnering for Pain generated a list of the top 10 research questions that are most important to patients. This “spark” has already led to a multitude of research projects and the implementation of new health policies.

A key aspect of Birnie’s patient-oriented approach is making research and knowledge readily accessible to the public. She talked about her leadership in the SKIP network, which puts knowledge into practice by creating evidence-based resources to promote pain management and prevention in children.

In her closing remarks, Birnie gave inspiring examples of how she continually questions her own work to improve it: “Is this research meaningful to people with lived experience? Is it going to be effective? Is it timely? Can it have an impact? Does it enhance equity?”

The balancing act

Involving people with lived experience and the broader public in the scientific enterprise is not a new concept, so why has the pain research community as a whole been hesitant to follow Birnie’s advice?

Pediatric research is challenging, demands careful planning, and requires us to be cognizant of our available resources. Involving patient partners in research requires a “balancing act” between our desire to improve each patient’s situation and their need to have a meaningful life beyond their experience of pain. It’s clear that taking the lived experience of our patient partners seriously can lead to improved care. However, if we continue to involve them in our research projects, will these children ever be able to shed the role of “pain patient” and start to be “just kids” again?

It’s our job as researchers to think about ethical dilemmas like these when planning research projects involving patient partners. We need to be mindful that the ultimate goal of treating our patient partners is to ameliorate their pain Otherwise, we as researchers could unwillingly contribute to the chronification of pain. Dr. Katie Birnie’s lecture shows how invaluable the patient perspective is to pediatric pain research and how, at the same time, researchers should be mindful of the role their parners play.

You can follow Katie Birnie’s research on Twitter/X – @katebirnie.

Lisa-Marie Rau is a PhD candidate at the German Paediatric Pain Centre in Datteln, Germany. You can follow her on Twitter/X – @Lisa_Marie_Rau.

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