Who We Are
Dr. Dan Bates
Dan brings the WHY with diagnosis and science, breaking down complex topics with easy-to-understand metaphors and thoughtful algorithms.
Dan is a Sports and Exercise Medicine Specialist. His new clinic “Back, Neck and Joint”, is in Melbourne, Australia. He is the former Managing Director at Metro Pain Group, Monash Clinical Research and is the Board Chairman at Monash House Private Hospital. Dan works full-time with people suffering from back, neck and joint pain (thus the clinic name). Prior, he has worked extensively in Sports Medicine and for multiple professional and national sporting teams. He was the head doctor at Australian Football League teams Melbourne and North Melbourne.
He got interested in chronic pain because of his personal experience with his mum, who has had 4 spinal operations and a lifetime of pain. He also became interested as his waiting lists grew. It meant that anyone that was able to wait, was suffering chronic pain. Once that happened, he needed new solutions to care for his patients.
His research career has been broad, covering exercise-induced asthma, examination techniques, biologics, osteoarthritis, chronic pain, and neuromodulation. He lectures nationally and internationally regularly, has three kids, and the world's most tolerant wife.
Dan is passionate about breaking down barriers between patients and providers and helping patients take back what pain has stolen from them.
Coach Justine Feitelson
Justine brings the HOW - how do we actually implement these concepts considering the real life implications and mental and physical struggles chronic pain patients have?
Justine Feitelson is a chronic pain patient and founder of Resilient Warrior Coaching. She is a Pain Coach and Movement Professional who works with complex patients in particular. After largely recovering from a brain injury suffered in 2011, she was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome in 2019 and since set forth on a path to better understand pain and human movement so she could improve her life and others. She quickly realized our own bodies are the greatest tool to create change, yet we are often missing the skillbase to take advantage of our most powerful asset.
Justine felt an immense void in patient education around CRPS, how complex pain manifests, available treatment options, and how to work more collaboratively with physicians in the traditional pain space. She is passionate about bridging the gap in understanding and expectations between patients and providers by empowering patients to be their own advocates and take control of the pieces of their pain management journey they impact using her MARSMethod, as well as helping physicians better understand the very real challenges patients with complex, chronic diseases face and improving empathy and inclusion.
Justine has a B.A. from Washington State University, is an OPEX Certified Coaching Professional (CCP), and Level 3 Neurostudio practitioner. She began her movement career in Cross Fit, getting her Cross Fit L1 (CF-OL1), USAWL-L1 (olympic lifting) and Adaptive & Inclusive Trainer (AIT) certifications. She then began moving more into individual design and addressing compensations/mobility with Pain Free Performance Specialist (PPSC) and Low Pressure Fitness L1-Trainer (LPF-L1) credentials, and has more recently integrated a sensory/brain-based approach through a neuro lens.
Living with chronic pain and difficult to treat or poorly understood diseases is unfortunately beyond what the medical system is designed to support. It often lacks the communication and individualized attention to detail that help patients understand what is going on in their bodies, what they can control, and what they need to impact or further outsource.
Doctors don’t have the time or ability to cover and address many of the variables in patients lives that are dramatically impacting their quality of life with chronic pain. But it’s not because they don’t care. There are diagnostic and therapeutic limitations clinicians encounter that set everyone up for frustration, and your position on the therapeutic spectrum is driven by your diagnostic and therapeutic limitations as a provider. What you believe in centers around what you have access to and the inherent biases that develop as you practice over time.
We are biased by our own successes who come back, the successes of others we never see, our failures who never come back, and the failures of others we see. It’s not about fighting over what perspective is the best, it’s about recognizing what patients benefit from what strategies.
The challenge with chronic pain is having the frameworks and thinking tools to tease out all the inputs resulting in the outputs the patent is experiencing, and matching the approach (from conservative management to more invasive options) to the presentation most effectively.
Physicians job is to diagnose, manage treatments and perform interventions. Patients job is to manage everything else about their life that contributes to and amplifies pain. Our job on this podcast is to help you identify what those things are, and teach you how to communicate and impact them more effectively so you can shave off more pain as a patient, and improve your skillset as a provider so you get better outcomes.
Patients need to be empowered to better understand their options, communicate their symptoms, and impact pain. Providers need more target ways to pull the appropriate information out of patients and more effectively investigate.