by Christopher Sanchez
Daily Lobo
Walter Forman said people in chronic pain should not have to end their life for relief.
"People don't want to die. They want to live, but they don't want to live in pain. So my job is to relieve their pain," said Forman, medical director of Heritage Home Healthcare and Hospice, which specializes in helping people in pain.
Forman, also a professor of medicine at UNM, specializes in palliative medicine, a form of health care that provides a better quality of life for a patient suffering from a life-threatening illness.
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A $10,000 grant was awarded to Forman in December to educate people about talking to their doctor about pain. Forman said many patients will see a doctor about diabetes or heart problems, but they will not tell the doctor about smaller problems such as arthritis pain.
"Most people say, 'You're getting older, you should have pain,'" he said. "What we're saying is you shouldn't have pain."
Palliative care is becoming a popular method of dealing with chronic pain, Forman said, but the topic of physician-assisted suicide is still highly debated across the nation. In California on Tuesday, a group of legislators and advocates launched a campaign to permit physician-assisted suicide in California. This comes a week after the U.S. Supreme Court backed the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, which was instated in 1997.
Forman said people who end their lives to deal with pain do not know there are other ways of relieving the pain. He added 95 percent of pain can be eliminated with the help of medication.
Forman also teaches a program to help medical students get their certificate of the board in palliative medicine. The curriculum consists of teaching students about chronic pain and end-of-life care, he said.
Not all of Forman's patients have a life-threatening illness, he said, but all of his patients deal with unbearable pain. He said the program is designed to relieve chronic pain so patients can continue their daily activities.
"Most of us think of pain as breaking a leg," he said. "We're talking about people who have pain on a chronic basis - day after day, month after month. Those are the folks we care for."
Forman said the program also helps people with their mental health, because people with chronic pain can become depressed and suicidal. Spiritual advisers and physical therapists are also part of the program.
Forman said the spiritual adviser is not affiliated with a particular religion.
"We try not to bring religion to the forefront - we bring spirituality," he said. "We are all spiritual beings. We all have some feeling of life and about life after."
Forman said patient funding varies on their insurance plan, but Medicare should cover palliative care. Forman said he has about 500 patients, most of them elderly.
Forman became interested in palliative care because he wanted to help people who were suffering, he said.
Palliative medicine is still a new area of medicine, he said, but it is starting to catch on to many physicians.
