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info@ampainsoc.org847.375.4715
American Pain Society
4700 W Lake Ave
Glenview, IL 60025
Raymond C. Tait, PhD, Department Editor
Beth Murinson, MD PhD, and Debra Gordon, MS RN
APS has a new special interest group (SIG) dedicated to pain education. After several years of growing interest in pain education, the SIG was formed with a virtual tidal wave of support from APS members! The first meeting of the Pain Education SIG was held at the APS 28th Annual Scientific Meeting in San Diego, CA, and those in attendance expressed interest in a variety of topics.
| “The primary goals of this SIG are to help APS members gain access to pain education resources, enhance professional skills in the area of education, and strengthen pain education through interprofessional collaboration. We would be delighted to have your participation.” |
We have formed a group of people dedicated to creating improvements in pain education. The primary goals of this SIG are to help APS members gain access to pain education resources, enhance professional skills in the area of education, and strengthen pain education through interprofessional collaboration. We would be delighted to have your participation.
One of the core commitments of the Pain Education SIG is to foster interprofessional collaboration. In one sense, this may seem like a substantial challenge for those of us working in traditional healthcare education settings where there may be resistance to interprofessional education. It is new and relatively untested, is representative of a change from the historical norms of separate educational pathways, and it may require additional effort to design new material that meets the needs of multiple professional paths. We spent time discussing how to capitalize on the richness of APS’s interprofessional membership—how we can work together, how we can model interprofessional collaboration, and how we can springboard from the society’s strength to advocate for improved pain education within our respective specialties. Clearly, future discussion is necessary.
It was apparent from the discussion at the first SIG meeting that APS has educators who envision themselves focusing their efforts on specific groups of learners. These groups would include: healthcare trainees at the level of primary education (medical, nursing, physical therapy, and psychology schools, and the residency and fellowship levels); practitioners already in practice (postgraduate and continuing education); and patient educators. It is important to note that there are already organizations dedicated to providing patients with educational materials about pain. Pain Education SIG members envision a focus on aiding practitioners to become better teachers, rather than in the development of patient resource materials. Those interested in postgraduate education raised the topical issue of the educational components of Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) programs, which will be an important area of effort for APS in the year ahead. Those working on primary education recognized the important challenges in promoting interdisciplinary pain education at specific institutions. More efforts are planned in this area regarding improved access to teaching materials and gaining insight into advocating for more pain education at the local, regional, and national levels.
Finally, a pressing need was identified for connecting APS members with existing educational resources. We plan to provide links to exceptional, educational Web resources through our SIG Web page and welcome your submissions.
We hope you will join us in the Pain Education SIG—your enthusiastic participation is most welcome!
For more information, please see the Pain Education Web site at www.ampainsoc.org/member/sigsites/ pain_education.
