On Validation or Lip Service: A Conversation with the Experts

The story below is written by Jenny Lorca, a patient partner of the Chronic Pain Network on her experience on a panel at the Pacific Pain Forum in Vancouver in April 2025.

I’m going to ask you to stand and I’m going to describe an experience, and if you have had that experience, you’re going to sit down.

While I am no stranger to speaking in front of a virtual audience, I am nonetheless unaccustomed to being out in public these days. I half-joke that to leave the house I have to pack a bag for each of my symptoms as though they were fussy toddlers: folding cane (check), heat pack (check), regular meds (check), extra meds in case I drop them (check), prn meds (check), enormous travel mug (check), emergency chocolate (check).

Sit down if you’ve ever referred to your patient by their diagnosis, surgery, or treatment.

Keith Meldrum, a well-known longtime advocate in the pain community, invited me to speak at this event as a member of a plenary panel session. The topic was on “validation”.

The “dream team” was comprised of friends, colleagues, and fellow pain advocates and storytellers: Keith, Virginia McIntyre of People in Pain Network (PIPN), Desmond Williams of Pain Canada and PEPR (Partnership for the Engagement of People in Pain Research), and Tori Etheridge, a physiotherapist and clinical lead at Pain Care BC who acted as moderator.

Sit down if you’ve questioned whether your patient was “drug-seeking”.

We called ourselves “The Disruptors”, because this panel was the first plenary session at the Pacific Pain Forum led by people with lived and living experience of pain (PWLLE), and it was evident from our first meeting together that our intention was to shake things up among the attendees—most of whom we anticipated would be clinicians.

Sit down if you’ve described your patient as “demanding”,” non-compliant”, “labile”, or “aggressive” but didn’t investigate why.

Validation is poignant and deeply personal when you live with pain or any chronic condition, and especially if that condition is “invisible”.

When your experience is validated by others, you feel the absolute certainty of being seen, heard, and valued as an expert in your own experience. When the emptiness of “lip service” is being paid, it rings untrue and sets off your BS-ometer, leaving you with an “ick” feeling. When you are invalidated, like I’m sure many of us have been in our individual pain pilgrimage, it can feel like you’re subhuman. Like you are wasting time. Like you don’t matter.

Sit down if you have questioned whether your patient is catastrophizing or doubted whether the pain or other symptoms are as bad as your patient says they are.

These were the shared experiences we Disruptors brought to the table.

What made our panel even more disruptive was our invitation to the audience to be willing to experience discomfort—and hopefully growth—during our 45-minute session…after all, we on the panel are no strangers to discomfort.

I took inspiration from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 2016 TED Talk on “The Urgency of Intersectionality”, invited everyone to stand as part of an activity, and as I listed descriptions of experiences taken from my own practice when I was a healthcare professional, I bade them sit down.

I too sat down.

So who is left standing?

By the end of the activity, out of 200 plus people, mostly clinicians—some of whom I’ve known in my other life “Before Pain”—only a mere handful were left standing. And that’s probably because the ones who remained had lived or living experience with pain, were caregivers or members of the public, have never been in clinical practice, or were, as I said with a wink, “…One of those ‘Unicorn Clinicians’ who have totally done their ‘work’ and have never ever ever ever brought their unconscious beliefs, behaviours, or biases to the clinical practice setting. Ever.”

“Pain is a catalyst for change.” (Desmond Williams)

There was a palpable shift in the room as I watched the faces of the rest of my friends on the panel speak to their experiences.

We asked everyone in the audience to reflect on their clinical practice, backwards and forwards. We asked folx to consider their agendas and the balance of power in each interaction. We asked clinicians to shift from being a “fixer” to being a “supporter”. We asked people to listen, even in their discomfort. We asked for empathy and understanding not just today but in their work moving forward.

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the person with the disease.” (Sir William Osler)

There were few questions, presumably because we gave the audience much to reflect on. Afterwards, however, the responses I noticed were interesting and mixed: some were thoughtful, some were humbled and tearful, some were inspired, some couldn’t make eye contact, many were grateful. We were approached later in the evening and asked, “How can I be a better clinician?” “How can we teach clinicians to do better by our patients?”

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou)

Start upstream in education, we said. Start by embedding patient partners in every stage of research, education, strategy, and policymaking without tokenizing us, we said—and truly redress the imbalance of power in these settings, don’t just pay lip service.

Because the reality is, our situations could have easily been reversed; and it could have been any one of them standing on the stage asking to be validated in their pain.