National Panel Sounds Alarm About Lack of Physician Training to Treat Chronic Pain; Major Health Groups Endorse New Report Which Calls for Urgent Medical School and Health System Reform

“Epidemic” of undertreatment affects more than 70 million Americans

The Mayday Fund Special Committee on Pain and the Practice of Medicine writes that chronic pain should be reframed as a chronic illness since “the burden of chronic pain is greater than that of diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.” People in chronic pain have longer hospital stays, and many duplicative tests and unproven treatments—all of which drive up the nation’s health care spending, the panel said.

http://www.rsds.org/5/news/2009/Nove...ort_5_199.html

“Doctors, who don’t lack for compassion or medical skills, often offer only limited treatments to patients disabled by chronic pain,” said Lonnie Zeltzer, M.D., co-chair of the panel, and the director of the Pediatric Pain Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. “With little or no specific training in pain management, and working in systems that make it much easier to treat common conditions like high blood pressure than a complex problem like pain, doctors may intend to help but leave most patients under-assessed and under-treated. Minorities, children and women often faced the highest risk of under-treatment.”

Hi Sandel, Thank you for the information about lack of training for chronic pain patients. This is something to be concerned about, not just for us,but for all the future children and adults in the future.
At the annual RSDSA meeting, they said there are 50,000 people a year getting RSD. That's a huge amount of people. I'm grateful for a Dr. who understands chronic pain and RSD.
Thank you again so much for all your research posts. They are always so informative. Hope you are having low pain days. Take care, loretta with soft hugs

I think, it's getting better all the time..
I remember back in '83, when I got injured, NOBODY knew anything about pain, and especially RSD! I had many doctors tell me that I was malingering, (But, when I got to Dr S. he knew, since I was successfully self employed, that it wouldn't make sense!), AND, before he testified for me, he tested me, to make sure it wasn't caused by anything else. (And, I won't tell anyone how). He must do that, because he carries such a big gun. But, it took me 7 years to get to him! Only because my chiro, had a patient who had this, and was seeing him too! I got so tired of driving to different doctors with no result, I started to interview them on the phone, sure they could see my records. I used to get up and walk out of doctors office' as soon as I saw that they had no clue. (Why waste the time, and the Ins. Co money?)

Nowadays, we have an internet, doctors know when you say "RSD".
(They may be frightened, but, they know). Moreover, Ins. Co's Know! Because RSD, is So expensive to treat, and, that's all that can be done!
I read this morning, that chronic pain costs more than High Blood pressure, Diabetes, and Cancer combined! Think about it. Those are well controlled, or, the person doesn't survive.
I'm sorry to say, but, either way, it's not an "Open Drain" to the Ins. Co's Money.
They really freak when they hear RSD.

So, maybe things will start to change. When markets emerge, jobs are created to fill the void. We can only hope and pray.

pete

Hi Sandel,

The field of pain management is an ever evolving specialty, still in it's infancy.

That is why it was so important that our Gov here in BC recognized and designated pain as disease in and of itself. With that recognition in place it is much easier for the Pain Centers to get the badly needed funding to expand and yes that that includes education. Also with this designation it will help to attract bright minds to the specialty. But it's not just the specialist that need to be trained as your posting pointed out “With little or no specific training in pain management," "doctors may intend to help but leave most patients under-assessed and under-treated." This applies to all areas of the world.

Here is an interesting article recently published about a pain study in Switzerland. It speaks to the fact universally accepted guidelines are required for all doctors to be able to effectively treat chronic pain patients.


I often wonder if my orthopedic surgeon had put me in orthotics first instead of operating what my life would be like now. He lied in court documents stating that I had already been using orthotics. NOT! But I digress.

Good interesting topic. Thanks.

MsL