What do you need help with: Chronic pain and fatigue
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS, is a long-term condition with a wide range of symptoms. The most common symptom is extreme tiredness.
Other symptoms include: still feeling tired after resting or sleeping, taking a long time to recover after physical activity, problems sleeping, and problems with thinking, memory and concentration.
If you need support around ME/CFS or long covid please ask your GP to refer to paediatrics who can refer to us if appropriate. Chronic or Persistent pain is pain that lasts longer than 12 weeks, or beyond the natural healing time. There isn’t always an obvious cause for persistent pain but sometimes it is after an injury.
Most people get back to normal after experiencing pain following an injury or operation. But sometimes the pain carries on for longer. Sometimes there’s no identifiable cause for persistent pain.
Persistent pain can impact on lots of aspects of your life and can make it harder to go to school, see your friends and do the things that you enjoy Physiotherapy will accept direct referrals from the GP for persistent pain.
How to make a referral yourself
To make a referral you will need to download and fill in one or more forms and answer questions about what you need help with. Your answers will give our clinical specialists the essential information they need.
It helps if you can give us as much detailed information as possible, such as:
- how long the difficulties have lasted
- how they affect day-to-day life
- other relevant experiences
You may need to share information from a doctor, nurse, other healthcare professional, or school SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator).
NOTE- Children’s Physiotherapy covers Torbay and South Devon only and requires a referral from a healthcare professional for assessment and intervention.
Sending the form back to us
We’d prefer that you email the form back to us at cfhd.devonspa@nhs.net.
When you email us, please make sure:
- the documents you send are only in Word (.doc/.docx), PDF (.pdf) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) formats
- each document is attached separately and is less than 3MB in size
- you don’t attach multiple single pages
- the email is less than 10MB in total
If this is tricky for you, you can print out the form, fill it in by hand, and post it back to us at: Single point of Access, 1a Capital Court, Sowton Industrial Estate, Exeter EX2 7FW