Pain Education in North American Medical Schools

Consensus-Based Recommendations for an Emergency Medicine Pain Management Curriculum

“…The 2011 survey of 117 medical schools in North America found that about 80% of schools required $1 pain session; the median total number of pain sessions taught was 7, accounting for 11 total hours, and only 4 U.S. schools had a required course in pain management (18). The authors concluded that ''There are inarguable links between the undertreatment and the maltreatment of pain and the lackluster state of pain education in medicine.…”

“…Organizations should recognize the need to demonstrate competency and use the educational intervention as an opportunity to express institutional values and subsequently evaluate the impact on patient outcomes (31). Quality improvement approaches may be ideal to test the deliverables of the intervention by identifying specific process measures that can be linked to desired outcomes (18). These measures may take the form of patient-related outcomes (e.g., pain scores, surveys, or adverse events) or metrics at the institution or community level, and should be followed longitudinally (32)(33)(34).…”

Interprofessional Pain Education: the Road to Successful Pain Management Outcomes

“…Although pain education has been identified as a strategy to improve ineffective pain management practices [6], recent evidence demonstrates the continuing lack of pain content in health science curricula, particularly for students in their first professional program (prelicensure/undergraduate/entry-to-practice) [7][8][9] IASP has also recognized the importance of collaboration and interprofessional education. Building on the successful uniprofessional curricula, it has recently developed an Interprofessional Pain Curriculum Outline to be available online to members and the wider community.…”

“…In both Canada and the UK, the content emphasis was considerably less for pain assessment, which is essential to management, compared with neurophysiology and management strategies such as pharmacology. Furthermore, Mezei and Murinson found significant gaps between recommended pain curricula and pain education content in American and Canadian medical schools [9]. Medicine graduates comprise a large group of future practitioners yet pain education for this medical student group was described as limited and fragmented.…”

Improving Residents' Safe Opioid Prescribing for Chronic Pain Using an Objective Structured Clinical Examination

“…[6][7][8] Physicians struggle to balance benefits and harms of prescription opioids, 9 which is exacerbated by inadequate education. 10 Medical trainees report low levels of confidence managing chronic pain. 11,12 Safe opioid prescribing education can improve residents' attitudes, 13 knowledge, 14,15 and confidence.…”