Pain education and training: progress or paralysis?

Abstract

The time has come for organized medicine, led by the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) working with other pain organizations, to address systematically and rigorously the need for standards in pain education for all medical schools and relevant training in pain management for all clinical specialties. This education and training needs to be provided by faculty uniformly and reliably trained in pain medicine, and these faculty must be supported by academic medical centers and training facilities. In this issue, two of our leaders in developing pain curricula in medical schools present their important work. Dr. Hui-Ming Chang reviews and comments on the progress that has been made in medical school education, including her and her colleagues' work at the University of Texas in Houston. Dr. Debra Weiner and Gregory Turner at the University of Pittsburgh present their systematic development of a curriculum in pain medicine for the elderly, using a modified Delphi method. The AAPM, representing the medical specialty of pain medicine, must continue to encourage and support medical school faculty to lead medicine in this mission. The AAPM's Long-range Planning Committee first articulated a concern about the unevenness of medical student education in pain in 1997, laying the groundwork for the AAPM's appointment in 1998 of the Undergraduate Education Committee, co-chaired by this editor and Dr. Chang. We were convinced that by establishing a standing committee with its sole objective to improve and standardize medical student education (and therefore the education of all future physicians —“preaching to the choir!”), we would maintain a continuity of focus and work that would eventually lead to progress and success. The legitimacy of this mission, which was already established by epidemiological studies demonstrating the high incidence of inadequately treated pain in hospitals (over 50%) and in the general population, was further supported …