Rate My Professor Susan Lord

Susan Lord is a Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health, College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She holds the degrees BMedSci, BMed(Hons), PhD, FANZCA, and FFPMANZCA, having graduated first in her class in Medicine. A specialist pain medicine physician with training in anaesthesia, she serves as Clinical Lead and Senior Staff Specialist in the Children’s Complex Pain Service at John Hunter Children’s Hospital, Hunter New England Local Health District, a role she has held since 2004. Her advocacy efforts contributed to establishing Australia’s first interdisciplinary paediatric complex pain service outside a state capital in Newcastle in 2013. Lord is also affiliated with the Hunter Medical Research Institute, where she connects clinical practice with research to address patient needs.

Lord’s doctoral research examined the diagnosis and treatment of chronic cervical zygapophyseal joint pain, particularly after whiplash, resulting in landmark publications such as “Percutaneous Radio-Frequency Neurotomy for Chronic Cervical Zygapophyseal-Joint Pain” (New England Journal of Medicine, 1996), “Chronic Cervical Zygapophysial Joint Pain after Whiplash: A Placebo-Controlled Prevalence Study” (Spine, 1996), “Whiplash Injury” (Pain, 1994), and “The Prevalence of Chronic Cervical Zygapophysial Joint Pain after Whiplash” (Spine, 1995). This work earned her the International Association for the Study of Pain Ronald Dubner Research Prize and continues to inform international spinal pain guidelines. Her research specializations include pain management, chronic non-cancer pain in children and adolescents, pain assessment, paediatric complex pain, and health services research to enhance equity, access, and capacity in pain care for youth, incorporating lived experience voices and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community priorities, often leveraging digital solutions. As Chief Investigator, she has led grants totaling over $3.6 million in the past five years, including two MRFF-funded projects. Recent key publications encompass “Pharmacological interventions for chronic pain in children: an overview of systematic reviews” (Pain, 2019), a high-impact Cochrane Collaboration Overview, “PaedePPOC—the Paediatric Electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration: Establishment of a bi-national system for benchmarking children’s persistent pain services” (Pain Management, 2019), “Antiepileptic drugs for chronic non-cancer pain in children and adolescents” (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2017), and “Retrospective review of consecutive cases of paediatric complex pain in a New South Wales tertiary children’s hospital” (Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 2017). She contributes to the Australian Therapeutic Guidelines, Australian Medicines Handbook, and WHO Guideline on the Management of Chronic Pain in Children. Lord holds leadership positions including Faculty of Pain Medicine representative on the ANZCA Professional Affairs Executive Committee, member of the FPM Research Committee, executive of the Pain in Childhood Special Interest Group in the Australian Pain Society, and NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation Pain Management Network, with service on journal editorial boards, Cochrane reviews, and scientific committees.