What’s a great way to channel years of research expertise after you retire?

Publish a book, says Dr. Sandra LeFort.

Though she’d been working on Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain for several years, it wasn’t published until a few months after she retired from Memorial’s School of Nursing.

The book represents more than 25 years of Dr. LeFort's work in the field of chronic pain, ever since she embarked on her PhD program at McGill University in the 1990s.

“The book was launched in April, and I’m thrilled with the results,” she said. “I really hope it will improve the lives of people with chronic pain and help family members better understand how complex chronic pain really is.”

Dr. LeFort is recognized internationally for her work in the area. It’s a research interest that she traces back to the time when a close family member was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was admitted to the Palliative Care Unit (PCU) at St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in St. John’s due to terrible pain.

“The PCU was about comfort and quality of life. Their approach to pain management was different than what he — our family member — had experienced in acute care, so I became very interested in pain as an area of research and decided to focus on chronic, painful conditions.”

Though intended for people suffering with chronic pain and their families, Dr. LeFort says her new book could also be useful for health-care professionals by introducing them to self-management tools and strategies — ways that people with chronic pain can better manage their chronic pain every day.

“If health-care professionals know more about these tools and strategies, then they can encourage their patients to try them and incorporate them into their lives,” said Dr. LeFort.

She addresses a range of issues in the book, including stress management techniques, the importance of exercise and physical activity, healthy eating, open communication with family and friends, managing common symptoms like depression, difficult emotions, fatigue, and sleep problems, and how to best manage medications.

Dr. LeFort worked on Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain in collaboration with Dr. Kate Lorig, also a nurse, from the Stanford Patient Education Research Center at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. The two had previously developed a self-management program for people with chronic pain. As part of the program, every participant received a workbook she developed, and later self-published.

A few years ago an American publishing house in Colorado, Bull Publishing, asked Dr. LeFort and her Stanford colleagues to write a book on chronic pain. She jumped at the chance.

"I had always wanted to write a comprehensive book."

Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain is available through Amazon or from Bull Publishing.