From Cheewee Tan

Pain Research - Queen Margaret University

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Personal Details

Academic's Name: Chee-Wee, Tan
Position: Lecturer
University: Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
School: School of Health Sciences
Subject Area: Physiotherapy
Address: Queen Margaret University Drive, Edinburgh, EH21 6UU.
Room: Level 2
Phone: (+44) 0131 4740000
Email: ctan@qmu.ac.uk

Research Groups:
Pain & Palliative Care Research Focus Group
Lymphoedema Research Focus Group

Research interests:
Applied pain psychophysics, the role of attention in chronic pain, Signal Detection Theory in the study of pain.

Current research:
Pain - I am currently investigating the use of signal detection theory as an experimental paradigm to assess the various variables that influence pain perception.

Sham/Placebo Acupuncture - The use of sham and placebo acupuncture is becoming more common in clinical acupuncture research. Despite claims that sham acupuncture provides a credible simulation of real acupuncture, the methodology for trials assessing the credibility of sham acupuncture is weak. I am interested in the credibility of various sham and placebo acupuncture used in experimental and clinical studies. The aim is to examine and improve current methods of placebo or sham control for acupuncture trials.

Publications:

TAN C-W, PALMER ST, MARTIN DJ & ROCHE PA. (2007). Detection-theory analysis of scaling and discrimination tasks: Responses to noxious thermal stimuli. Perception & Psychophysics, 69(6):994-1001.
[2](paper)
Erratum: p995, ln 14-16, instead of "Laming (1984) argued that the magnitude that participants assigned to physical stimuli may be considered to be only nominal", it should have been "...considered to be ordinal".

Conference proceedings:
TAN CW, MARTIN D, ROCHE P & PALMER S (2007). Noxious heat discrimination ability in persons with chronic pain: A psychophysical study. Physiotherapy, 93, Supplement 1, S136. Presented at the 15th International Congress of the World Confederation of Physical Therapists, Vancouver, Canada, June 02-06.
[3](paper)[???](abstract)

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, ROCHE P. (2005). Chronic pain sufferers exhibit poorer noxious discrimination ability compared to healthy individuals. 11th World Congress on Pain, Sydney, Australia, August 21-26, 1596-P99.
[4](poster)
(This paper is a preliminary report of the abstract to be presented at the WCPT conference (2007). Therefore, the figures for the two papers are different due to the different control groups used for analysis. The 2007 abstract is the final results of the study.)

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, VETO J, ROCHE P. (2005). The effects of a topical anaesthetic (EMLA) on noxious thermal discrimination: A psychophysical study. The Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Edinburgh, March 8-11, p22.
[5](poster)

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, ROCHE P. (2005). The influence of stimulus presentation frequency on noxious thermal discrimination: A methodological study. The Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Edinburgh, March 8-11, p23.
[6](poster)

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, KIRK K. (2004). Comparison of context-coding noise within discrimination and intensity rating methods in the study of pain perception. The Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Manchester, March 30-April 2, p105.

Potentially Useful Information

For Colleagues:

Camstudio [7] - an open source (GPL) screen recording software. Commonly used for capturing screen videos for training, tutorials or even recording lectures on SMART board.

CSP Electrophysical Agents Guidelines (6.3Mb) [8]
.

For Students:

The materials you need can be found on the WebCT created for that particular module. Access these through the University intranet.

Modules currently taught:

Entry-level modules:
Introduction to Research
Electrophysical Agents in Musculoskeletal Practice
Biomechanics
Interprofessional Studies

Postgraduate modules:
Research Methods 1

Useful Links:
International Association for the Study of Pain [9]
The British Pain Society [10]
International Society for Psychophysics [11]
American Pain Society [12]

Open Access Journals
Molecular Pain [13]
Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine [14]
This journal title sounds like a scientific jest, but it is a real journal with a serious message. As the website states "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that promotes a discussion of unexpected, controversial, provocative and/or negative results in the context of current tenets." So get out all those papers in your top desk drawer and start submitting!

SUPPORT OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING!

Don't know what Open Access Publishing is? [15]

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Visual Memories
World Congress of Physical Therapy, 2007, Vancouver 2-8 Jun [17]