Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Chronic Pain

Aim

The aim of this course is to address a deeper understanding of chronic pain, it´s personal and societal implications, assessment strategies and common treatment and rehabilitation interventions. Within this aim will be covered the need to work multiprofessionally and team based together with principles for evidence based medicine within the field of chronic pain.

A distinctive feature of the course is that the group of students is accompanied by experienced seminar leaders through the literature seminars in order to support the integration of knowledge.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Explain and analyze the concept of pain.
• Describe the differences between nociception and pain.
• Understand and analyze the general principles of a bio-psychosocial approach to pain and it´s assessments, treatments and rehabilitation interventions.
• Describe common personal and societal implications of chronic pain.
• Summarize and evaluate the main principles of treatment and rehabilitation interventions, the teamwork, and possible critiques against a biomedical view on pain.
• Motivate the choice of common treatment strategies for chronic pain conditions.
• Describe principles of evaluation and the concept of evidence based treatments.
• Initiate and participate in teamwork concerning patients with chronic pain.
• Describe and compare specific aspects of disability, rehabilitation and results in some common pain conditions according to the individual choice of the student.

Content

The course will include the following important moments: • Introductory lectures or presentations of the topics described by the learning goals, problem based learning, information retrieval, and critical reading of scientific papers. • Literature seminars on the main topics. The seminars are based on literature studies and in part on the lectures, in order to give extensive opportunities to discuss and integrate knowledge, and to share experiences between disciplines and nationalities. • Literature studies: In part, papers exemplifying the general principles common for all participants, and in part papers related to some specific diagnosis or type of pain conditions according to the personal choice of the individual participant. • Based on an individual case with a complicated chronic pain condition chosen by the student from his/hers own situation and country prior to the course written and oral presentations will be done with respect to diagnosis, assessment, treatment etc.