"Making Progress Towards Our Strategic Goals".

Abstract

It remains a great privilege for me to serve the Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists as Dean, backed up by a talented Board and Staff. We have continued to focus on delivery of our 2013–2017 strategic plan to promote our vision “to reduce the burden of pain in society through education, advocacy, training and research.” In my first report in 2014, I said that I would like to concentrate our efforts in five areas [1]. How have we progressed in these and in other areas? Training and education of specialist pain medicine physicians remains at the heart of the Faculty’s role. The year 2015 marked the launch of our redesigned curriculum and training program, the culmination of many months of work by the authoring groups and the Curriculum Redesign Steering Committee. A Learning and Development Committee was established to assume responsibility for ongoing oversight, support and evaluation of the training program. The revised curriculum training program is competency-based and is based on particular CanMEDS roles. It focuses on the patient’s perspective, and is delivered centrally (with a knowledge focus) and in the Training Units (with a skill’s focus). It incorporates ongoing work-based formative assessment and progressive summative assessment, completed in two stages, the core training stage and the practice development stage. In order to progress it is mandatory for each applicant to pass a multiple choice questionnaire examination that tests their foundation knowledge of pain medicine. E-learning resources for the nine essential topic areas, as well as cultural competency, communication, management and professionalism resources, have all been developed. Two new Clinical Skills Courses (basic and advanced) have been designed and delivered to trainees. The delivery in accredited training units …