It can be difficult to attribute hours to categories of pain education accurately, such as when pain content is embedded within other subjects or if content is integrated across several subjects. Also, the variable length of undergraduate and graduate-entry physiotherapy programs impacts on interpretation of these data. Finally and perhaps most important, it is unknown whether greater quantity of education actually results in better understanding and skills. There is a need for further international research

into physiotherapy pain education, including accurate estimates not only of quantity but also effectiveness of education. Perhaps we can be guided by the bigger picture. In 2010, the International Pain Summit in Montreal and Australia’s National Pain Summit were held to identify how to improve quality of life for BI 2536 cell line people with pain. One of the central messages was that there are major deficits in the

knowledge of all health care professionals regarding the mechanisms and management of pain. Consequently, one recommendation was that Comprehensive education and training in pain management will give medical, nursing and allied health professionals in the public and private sectors the knowledge and resources to deliver best-practice evidence-based care ( National Pain Strategy 2010, p. 5). Useful resources have been available to physiotherapy educators seeking to develop curricula for some time. selleckchem The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) developed pain education curricula to support pre-registration training

and professional MTMR9 development for health professionals. These are updated regularly and new on-line resources are currently in development. This would be a fundamental resource for physiotherapy educators when designing curricula to ensure core competencies for the assessment and management of pain. For example, the educators could map where elements of the curricula can be integrated with existing content (Jones 2009). Interestingly, of the nine physiotherapy programs investigated in the UK, the IASP pain curricula had been fully implemented in only one course (Briggs et al 2011). Two examples of well described published pain curricula may provide useful models. The first is a Canadian interfaculty pain curriculum that has shown good outcomes (Hunter et al 2008). The interdisciplinary program is mandatory and informed by the IASP core and discipline-specific curricula. It consists of a 20-hour package that includes epidemiology, discipline-specific topics, and case-based sessions on acute and persistent pain, interprofessional pain management planning, and a choice of electives in subjects such as lifespan issues, genetics, gender, and cancer pain.