Michal Granot, RN, PhD, is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, Department of Nursing, University of Haifa, Israel. She was the Head of the Department and involved in the establishment of the Nursing programs in Bnei-Brak Orthodox College (Mavchar) campuses. Her clinical background as a midwife has shaped her research activity that focuses mainly on pain and women health by investigating the etiology, mechanism, and expression of pain modulation processes. As a member of the Haifa Pain Group at the Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology, Rambam Health Care Campus, Prof. Granot collaborate on projects that aim to promote transformational “lab to clinic” studies, encompassing mechanism-based tests that represent pain perception and modulation processing. She devoted part of her laboratory work to the conceptualization of a model that depicts the variability of pain experience and the plasticity of the nociceptive system.
Prof. Granot developed and use experimental-induced pain tests that mirrors inhibitory and facilitatory pain modulation pathways as well as brain activity, which involves in pain perception. She lead and take part in research projects that aim to evaluate and quantify mechanisms involved with normal, as well as altered, pain modulation responses. Her research combined assessment of brain processes during painful events, such as pain-evoked potentials, as well as the autonomic and psych-cognitive aspects of pain. Such advanced psychophysical and neurophysiological approaches enable clinicians and researchers to attain view of an individual's pain as obtained in early acute pain patients, can explain one’s risk to develop chronic pain disorders. Prof. Granot collaborate with well-known key experts in the fields of pain and gynecology with special focus on the domain of chronic pelvic pain disorders that results pain during intercourse and affect the quality of intimate relationships.
She is interest in women’s pain disorders and the mechanisms in which the ovarian hormones modulate pain processing and highlight the effect of cultural, and pain-related personality variables on pain manifestation as well as on health outcomes. She also explore pain complaints among women who were exposed to sexual abuse. Prof. Granot merge theoretical knowledge with current clinical issues and practices that require a multidimensional investigation approach in order to promote personalized medicine, based on the individual’s pathogenesis and needs.
Another aspect of her activity is understanding the phenomenon of absence of pain experience in situations of injury or acute disease. For example, altered pain perception in patients with silent ischemic heart diseases. These diverse studies contain the potential to enable pain clinicians to create evidence-based guidelines for the management of chronic pain conditions, based on individually-tailored pain mechanisms.
