Undergraduate pain curriculum: What needs to be included and what doesn ’ t?

One of the prominent themes in social media discussions about pain is that the subjects are not given sufficient attention at undergraduate level. The results of this omission are that many entry-level clinicians don’t have the necessary knowledge, skills or attitudes for working with people who experience pain. (As an aside, it also makes my job as a postgraduate Academic Leader much more difficult: where do I start when developing a programme?!) Luckily there is an IASP Pain Curriculum. Actually there are many of them, for many disciplines, and they provide educators with great guidance. The problem is, however, there is so much that could be included in this kind of education – and we usually don’t have much room in a programme to include it all. The main problems with the curriculum are: the content and levels of competency required at an undergraduate level aren’t specified; most research into this area targets postgraduates, with less attention for undergraduate pain education. Most curriculum for pain have been discipline-specific, and while a consensus on the content and desired competencies of an interprofessional pain curriculum at a pre-licence or undergraduate level has been discussed, an a-priori defined competency level across professions for the items in the IASP curriculum hasn’t been established. We need cross profession agreed competencies to allow for good collaboration. (see van Lankveld, Afram, Staal, van der Sande, 202...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Education/CME Pain conditions Professional topics Research Science in practice Source Type: blogs