Headache

Abstract

A new headache clinic in a Canadian downtown quaternary neurological center aimed at supporting clinicians in the community was opened in March 2017. As a means to help appreciate a patient's unique experience of pain, an initially therapeutic history-taking tool has blossomed into a visual tool to advocate, educate, and communicate their headache experience. Over a 10-month period, we asked 375 patients the question, what is the one word you use to describe your headache pain or experience? From this question, we derived 171 unique words with many recurring word themes showing shared experience (table ). These words were recorded in this illustration with increasing font size to represent the frequency of each word (figure). Fun fact-paying homage to the brain, particular words are intentionally placed near the control centers!