Author: Michael Pfingsten

Regine Klinger (Ph D) is responsible for the Department Pain Psychology at the Clinic and Outpatient Clinic for Anesthesiology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). Until December 2016 she was the president of the German Society for Psychological Pain Therapy and Research (DGPSF), the vice president of the German Pain Society (Deutschen Schmerzgesellschaft e.V.), and vice-president and member of the advisory board of the German chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Her main areas of research are psychological pain management in headache and back pain, placebos and nocebos, learning processes in the development and maintenance of chronic pain, and pain classifications. Dr. Monika Hasenbring is a professor of Medical Psychology and director of the Dept. of Medical Psychology and Sociology at the Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany. Her primary research interests are psychobiological models, risk factors and mechanisms in the transition from acute to chronic pain. Her research comprises experimental and clinical work including the development of questionnaires assessing different features of psychological pain processing. This research has been funded for several years by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the EU and within a nationwide German Institute of Sports Medicine (BISP) research network. Dr. Hasenbring is a member of the German Committee for the National Guidelines of Diagnostics and Treatment of Back Pain (NVL Back Pain) and co-editor of “Der Schmerz” (“Pain”; the  official journal of the German Chapter of IASP: German Pain Society (Deutschen Schmerzgesellschaft e.V.) Prof. Michael Pfingsten is a professor of Medical Psychology and head psychologist at the Department of Pain Medicine at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) Clinic of Anesthesiology. In 2008 he was temporary head of the Department of Medical Psychology at the University Medical Center of Marburg. Until December 2012 he was president of the German Society for Psychological Pain Therapy and Research (DGPSF) and the vice president of the German Pain Society (Deutschen Schmerzgesellschaft e.V.), the German chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and is now a member of the advisory board. His main areas of research are psychological management of back pain, chronification processes in pain, multimodal pain therapy, and quality management in pain therapy.