Chronic pain training for family doctors

There is a new Pain Management Practice Support program for family doctors in B.C. that is training physicians in the management of chronic pain. The program, developed by the B.C. Medical Association, has been designed to give doctors the knowledge, skills and techniques to assist patients with their chronic pain, including chronic neck and back pain arising as the result of car crashes (ICBC cases).

The first wave of training involved sixty physicians, who recently graduated. A second program is just starting. A program for physiotherapists is to follow.

There was a recognition that family physicians, in general, were poorly equipped to deal with chronic pain as they traditionally receive little or no training in how to manage such conditions during their medical school curriculum.

Dr. Michael Negraeff, a pain specialist at Vancouver General Hospital, who helped to develop the program calls chronic pain an orphaned condition.

The program, which is well funded through the Ministry of Health, and the recent recognition by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of a new pain medicine sub-specialty, have the potential of changing the way doctors and patients think of and deal with chronic pain.