Survey of undergraduate pain curricula for healthcare professionals in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The prevalence and burden of pain has long been reported as problematic. Comprehensive pain education in undergraduate programmes is essential for developing knowledgeable, skilled and effective healthcare professionals. This cross-sectional survey describes the nature, content and learning strategies for pain curricula in undergraduate healthcare programmes in major universities in the United Kingdom (UK). Document analysis also highlighted gaps in pain-related standards from professional regulators and a higher education quality assurance body. The sample consisted of 19 higher education institutions delivering 108 programmes across dentistry, medicine, midwifery, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy and veterinary science. Seventy-four (68.5%) questionnaires were returned averaging 12.0 h of pain content with physiotherapy and veterinary science students receiving the highest input. Pain education accounted for less than 1% of programme hours for some disciplines. Traditional teaching methods dominated (e.g. lectures 87.8%) and only two programmes had fully implemented the International Association for the Study of Pain's (IASP) curricula. Minimal pain-related standards were found from professional regulators and the quality assurance documents. Pain education is variable across and within disciplines and interprofessional learning is minimal. Published curricula for pain education have been available for over 20 years but are rarely employed and pain is not a core part of regulatory and quality assurance standards for health professions. The hours of pain education is woefully inadequate given the prevalence and burden of pain. Recommendations include the introduction of pain-related educational standards across all professions, greater integration of pain content in undergraduate programmes and interprofessional approaches to the topic.

Knowledge and attitudes of Jordanian nursing students toward children’s pain assessment and management: A cross-sectional study

“…A recent British report indicated that pain education represents less than 1% of the curricula in health care professions. [53] Several other investigators found that in current undergraduate nursing curricula, there is limited information on pain assessment and management available to undergraduate students. [28,29,35,54,55] Twycross [56] found that students receive only two class hours of pain education with more focus on pharmacological treatment.…”

Persistent Pain: Physiotherapy Student Experiences of Person-Centred Care in Musculoskeletal Outpatient Departments

“…It has been found that, on average, physiotherapy students have a greater amount of pain education compared to other health disciplines (Briggs, Carrl, andWhittakerl 2011, WattWatson et al 2009). These studies have not considered the quality of teaching though, with Etherton and Waterfield (2015) finding that physiotherapy students have felt unprepared to manage pain.…”

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.…”

“…An important question to ask is the degree to which pain content is a component of required curricula in health science faculties. Two recent cross-sectional studies underline a lack of attention to this complex healthcare issue in health science curricula [7,8]. 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.…”