Education: professional and lay: Pharmacist education in pain and palliative care: A report from the 2003 National Pain and Palliative Care Summit

Abstract

Institutions of pharmacy education have moved slowly to embrace the importance of pain and palliative care education in their didactic and experiential curricula. Despite pharmacists' crucial role in the appropriate interdisciplinary management of pain and associated symptoms, a paucity of structured classes, modules, clerkships, and other postgraduate experiences continue to exist. Recently a National Pain and Palliative Medicine Summit was convened to bring together professionals interested in change in the education, provision, and policy surrounding pain and palliative care in the United States. Representatives from the professions of pharmacy, medicine, and nursing all provided current barriers and opportunities for improved education in the field of pain and palliative care in their respective professions. Pharmacists, and students of pharmacy, have numerous barriers to adequate education in the care of persons in need of pain and palliative medicine. Although recent research suggests a positive trend in the provision of this knowledge, much room for improvement still exists. Unfortunately, recent media attention has focused on several shortcomings in the attitude, skills, and knowledge of pharmacist with respect to pain and palliative care. To address these issues, and strategies for enacting change in the current pharmacy school curricula, pharmacists in two focus sessions identified initiatives necessary to begin a structured approach to changing the ways in which our pharmacists and students of pharmacy are introduced to pain and palliative medicine. These initiatives, identified as crucial by the pharmacy task force at the 2003 Pain and Palliative Care Summit, will be presented.