Pain Education at the University of Washington School of Medicine

Abstract

Contemporary medical education is inadequate to prepare medical students to competently assess and design care plans for patients with acute and chronic pain. The time devoted to pain education in most medical school curricula is brief and not integrated into case-based clinical experiences, and it is frequently nonexistent during clinical clerkships. Medical student pain curricula have been proposed for over 30 years and are commonly agreed upon, though rarely implemented. As a consequence of poor undergraduate pain education, postgraduate trainees and practicing physicians struggle with both competency and practice satisfaction; their patients are similarly dissatisfied. At the University of Washington School of Medicine, a committee of multidisciplinary pain experts has, between 2009 and 2011, successfully introduced a 4-year integrated pain curriculum that increases required pain education teaching time from 6 to 25 hours, and clinical elective pain courses from 177 to 318 hours. It is expected that increased didactic and case-based multidisciplinary clinical training will increase knowledge and competency in biopsychosocial measurement-based pain narrative and risk assessment, improve understanding of persistent pain as a chronic complex condition, and expand the role of patient-centered interprofessional treatment for medical students, residents, and fellows, leading to better prepared practicing physicians.

Innovative Telementoring for Pain Management: Project ECHO Pain

“…In response, new and portable curricula and competencies are being developed in medical, nursing, pharmacy and other schools for the allied health professions . Incorporating information technology into the delivery of curricula has strengthened CME .…”

“…Incorporating information technology into the delivery of curricula has strengthened CME . Innovative teaching approaches include mentoring by means of video technology and this “telementoring” has been described in the literature as a reasonable method for delivering focused CME . This article details a telementoring CME/CPD innovation that is a potential solution to developing chronic pain expertise among health professionals.…”

How Does an Undergraduate Pain Course Influence Future Physicians' Awareness of Chronic Pain Concepts? A Comparative Study

“…Recently, a multidisciplinary group of experts, including among others representatives from the European Federation of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), launched a pan‐European initiative aiming at highlighting the importance of undergraduate pain education, as inadequate or nonexistent pain management training is still the norm in European medical schools [10]. The problem is equally evident in North America; although medical school pain curricula have been proposed for over 30 years, they are rarely implemented, with very little time devoted to pain education in the majority of American medical schools [8,11,12]. In specific, in a systematic review of 117 U.S. and Canadian medical schools, Mezei and Murinson reported considerable gaps between recommended pain curriculum and actual educational content in medical school education related to pain management [11].…”

A Blueprint of Pain Curriculum Across Prelicensure Health Sciences Programs: One NIH Pain Consortium Center of Excellence in Pain Education (CoEPE) Experience

“…3,5,19,29,33 A survey of 117 U.S. and Canadian medical schools 21 found that while most provided some pain content embedded in general courses, many topics recommended in the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) core curriculum 15 received little to no coverage. In general, Canadian schools provided more extensive pain education than did their U.S. counterparts.…”