An innovative, case-based, inter-professional approach to pain

Evidence suggests that healthcare professionals lack sufficient knowledge, skills and confidence to adequately manage pain. Inter-professional education is essential to overcoming these barriers and promoting high-quality team-based care. The primary objective of this project is to develop a module-based course to facilitate inter-professional education among physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, psychologists and dentists. Schools and colleges within Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, and St. Louis University are collaborating to develop and integrate the course either as an elective or for integration into currently offered courses. Professional students enrolled in the course will initially matriculate through the course together (approximately seven weeks) with content exposure that is relevant to all represented professions (e.g., pain assessment, barriers to treatment, pathogenesis of pain, ethics and disparities in care, etc.). The second part of the course will also focus on common topics (e.g., non-pharmacologic/pharmacologic approaches to management, acute/chronic pain, cancer pain, etc.); however, profession-specific issues will be addressed and learning will take place independently. However, the course will still be running concurrently with the other professions using case-based methodology. In this way, each of the students will be working with the same patient case but different learning objectives that are discipline-specific. To conclude the course, students will be assigned to multi-disciplinary teams to work through a complex patient case. This team will collectively discuss all aspects of patient care and develop an appropriate treatment plan. The materials and content will serve as a model to other educational settings in which inter-professional collaboration among all associated healthcare professionals is possible with the aim to positively impact team-based care in pain management. The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville / St. Louis University Center of Excellence in Pain Education is supported by a contract award from the NIH Pain Consortium.