About
TIER 1 APPROVED
ESCAPE-pain is an award-winning, NICE-approved rehabilitation programme for the management of osteoarthritis. Evaluation shows ESCAPE-pain reduces pain, improves physical function and mental wellbeing.
Operating in more than 30 UK sites (a mix of NHS physiotherapy departments, community and leisure settings), ESCAPE-pain has supported almost 3000 patients since the Health Innovation Network supported its implementation in 2013.
Evaluation shows the ESCAPE-pain programme:
- reduces pain
- improves physical function
- improves psychosocial consequences of pain – depression, self-confidence and self-esteem
- reduces healthcare and utilisation costs
Combining education and exercise, ESCAPE-pain is easy to implement and can produce annual savings of £1417 per patient.
Running twice weekly during six weeks, ESCAPE-pain involves individual, tailored exercise and education:
- informing patients about their condition
- teaching coping strategies
- challenging erroneous health beliefs (exercise will make joint pain worse)
- instilling behavioural change techniques
- creating an exercise ‘habit’ to use as a coping strategy to improve their condition.
ESCAPE-pain is also available as an app on smartphones and tablet .
The Health Innovation Network and Arthritis Research UK are working together to increase the ESCAPE-pain programme to benefit more people with arthritis.
For full research evidence, register with www.escape-pain.org
Useful resources
ESCAPE-pain Participant Interviews
