The EFIC Education Committee are examining the provision of compulsory pain education and availability of postgraduate pain specialisation options for physicians, physiotherapists, nurses, and psychologists across Europe. This study is an update and extension of the 2015 APPEAL study which examined inclusion of pain in medical curricula in 15 European countries. See publication here: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/8/e006984
In the current study, quality of pain education will be bench-marked against the four European Pain Federation EFIC Curricula for pain medicine, pain physiotherapy, pain psychology, and pain nursing to identify gaps in learning. Our Methodology consists of:1. A survey to seek curriculum information from medical, physiotherapy, nursing, and psychology schools across Europe2. Interviews with key organisations responsible for medical, physiotherapy, psychology and nursing higher education in Europe, and EFIC councillors3. Consensus meetings/workshops with the Steering Committee (+ input of pain forum organisations leadership)
The Survey will be launched in the next few weeks. Participation involves completing one online survey before mid-September (date to be confirmed). The full survey will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. If education about pain does not feature in your programme, the survey will take 2-3 minutes to complete.
The survey will ask questions about:
- The profile of the respondent (Including personal role, organisation details, discipline [i.e., medicine, physiotherapy, nursing, psychology]).
- General details of the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum provided (Including frequency and methods of pain-related teaching).
- Questions exploring the content of the curricula. (Including content related to the foundations of pain science and knowledge, managing different types of pain, principles of pain assessment and measurement, principles of pain treatment and management, special populations, and multidisciplinary approaches to pain management)
Any questions about this survey or the Pain Education Study should be sent first to EFIC’s Research Projects Advisor Dr Mary O’Keeffe at mary.okeeffe@efic.org.