ABSTRACT
Bonica’s concept of a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary clinic began following World War II and evolved over a period of 10 years or so. As late as 1960, the clinic that he founded at the University of Washington was the major such clinic in the United States, but a few other university centers were beginning to follow his model. This model is called the
nerve block drug-cut psychiatry clinic
because it was originally run entirely by anesthesiologists and led to an unfortunate sequence of events. Even though a group of up to 15 to 20 different health specialists were represented in the weekly reviews of patients, the initial major approach was to look at the patient as having a reasonable physical cause of pain and as a potential anatomical specimen where one could do a peripheral or differential spinal nerve block, relieve the pain, or send the patient to the neurosurgeon for ablation of the appropriate pain pathway.
