FORT SMITH - Dr. Natalie Strickland's goal is to treat patients like she'd want her family members to be treated.

That's good news for her patients at Mercy Clinic Interventional Pain Management. Dr. Strickland recently joined the clinic on the River Valley campus. She treats patients who suffer from a variety of conditions including headaches, neck, back and joint pain, post-operative pain or pain due to cancer.

Dr. Strickland, who is board certified in pain management and anesthesiology, also diagnoses and treats other types of pain, including:

• Sciatica - pain radiating along the sciatic nerve, which runs down one or both legs from the lower back

• Neuralgia - intense, typically intermittent pain along the course of a nerve

• Complex regional pain syndrome - chronic arm or leg pain developing after injury, surgery, stroke or heart attack.

Dr. Strickland received her medical degree from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City. She completed a pain medicine fellowship at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and an anesthesiology residency at Washington University in St. Louis.

She has medical teaching experience at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock and at Emory University and the Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta.

Dr. Strickland, who works alongside Dr. Brian Goodman and nurse practitioner Heather Manchester, is available for appointments at the clinic.