A pragmatic approach to teaching physician assistant students basic pain management

Abstract

Chronic pain is increasing in prevalence, with new cases now outnumbering those of diabetes, depression, or hypertension. Advanced practice providers have reported that their training in pain management inadequately prepared them to care for patients suffering from painful conditions. In response, the authors of this work developed a basic pain management conceptual framework to provide physician assistant (PA) students with the foundational knowledge necessary to manage and treat patients suffering from a wide variety of painful conditions. The devised framework activity includes categories of pain management such as conservative therapies, medications, injections, minimally invasive procedures, and moderately to highly invasive procedures. This framework can be incorporated into the existing PA educational curriculum and presented alongside a realistic pain patient case study. Furthermore, other health science educational programs, such as nurse practitioner or pharmacy programs, could adopt this framework to increase student knowledge in pain management.