Education

Don’t Miss Out on #ASM17

Join your colleagues at the APS Annual Scientific Meeting in Pittsburgh! Collaborate with other pain professionals from across the country and increase your knowledge of pain science and management.

This pioneering and foremost meeting offers current information about diagnosis, treatment, and management of acute pain, chronic cancer and noncancer pain, and recurrent pain. Presentations are designed to enhance research or clinical knowledge and competence pertinent to pain management and will feature content appropriate for professionals at several experience levels.

Already Registered?

Don’t forget to reserve your hotel room before April 24 to ensure your reservation. We have provided rooms, transportation info, and even discount codes for your convenience on our website. Rooms and dinner reservations fill up fast in Pittsburgh, so plan your trip now!

ASM Spotlight

Science in the Learning Lounge

Join us for informal, TED-style talks where you’ll have an opportunity to interact with the speakers and discuss clinical and basic science topics.

Chronic Posturgical Pain: Moving from Assessment to Intervention Research to Address Children's Pain After Surgery
Jennifer Rabbitts, MD

Extensive research has focused on establishing the burden of chronic postsurgical pain across the lifespan. Approximately 20% of children and adults experience persistent postsurgical pain, which is associated with poorer health and functional outcomes, after a range of surgical procedures. A considerable body of work has recognized psychosocial risk factors as central to the development of chronic postsurgical pain. However, it remains unclear how best to intervene to improve pain and health outcomes after surgery. Using research in pediatric postsurgical pain as an example, Dr. Rabbitts will focus on the critical next steps of translating the large body of observational research into targeted intervention. Innovative assessment strategies including long-term trajectory monitoring and qualitative research will be described as methods to inform preventive and treatment approaches. Clinicians and researchers can learn how to move from assessment to intervention research with the goal of early detection and intervention for problems with pain after surgery.

Forecasting the Opioid Epidemic
Donald Burke, MD

Opioid overdoses (including heroin) are now the leading cause of years of life lost in many parts of the U.S. Law enforcement agencies have called for a new approach emphasizing public health measures. Balancing the need to preserve access of those in pain to what remain the most effective analgesics available, with the deleterious impact of these drugs is clearly a complex problem. With the ability to assess both the cost and the benefit of policy decisions, computational modeling is a powerful approach to this problem. Public health agencies have long relied on this approach for policy decision support for other epidemics, and this approach can and should be used in the development of strategies to address the opioid epidemic. Dr. Burke will discuss the power of this approach to both identify solutions and influence public policy. He also will discuss the barriers we currently face in accessing the data necessary for the most effective implementation of this strategy.

Can Pain Research Proceed Without Animals?
Jeffrey Mogil, MD

Dr. Jeffrey Mogil has been one of the most active animal pain researchers internationally for over 20 years. There is an active debate over the utility and reproducibility of preclinical research using animals, and a number of pharmaceutical companies have abandoned animal research in analgesic drug development in favor of imaging, “omics,” “big data,” and stem cell-based techniques. The talk will examine power and limitations of all these approaches. Is it time to move past animal models of pain? Can animal models be made more predictive? Are the new human approaches the answer or just hype? Does pain research “work” at all? These questions and more will be discussed in an informal, interactive presentation.

For more session details, check out the full conference schedule.

Preconference Sessions

Fundamentals of Pain Management: An Interdisciplinary Primer

Ideal for Students, Trainees, and Early Career Professionals

The Fundamentals course provides a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary learning, exposure to the Annual Scientific Meeting, and a foundation for lifelong learning in pain science and pain medicine.

"The Fundamentals of Translational Pain Medicine: Integrating Science into Clinical Care" will be held prior to the start of the 36th Annual APS Scientific Meeting on Tuesday, May 16, and Wednesday, May 17, and will provide participants an opportunity to increase their interest in this specialty and enhance their professional practice.

NEW to Fundamentals in 2017 is the inclusion of self-study, prework to ready participants for the live interactive program that will offer didactic instruction with application to optimize transferability of learning into practice.

The cost for Fundamentals is $350. Preregistration is required. CE/CME credit is not offered for this course.

APS-CAT

As a followup to 2016’s first APS Conference on Analgesic Trials (APS-CAT), APS will present the second annual APS-CAT on May 17, 2017. This event will be chaired and moderated by Neil Singla, MD, who is the APS Clinical Trials special interest group chair and chief scientific officer of Lotus Clinical Research.

APS-CAT is a full-day conference focused on optimizing the design and conduct of analgesic clinical trials. APS-CAT 2016 hosted 200 pain research professionals for expert presentations and a Q&A session with an eight-member panel. Audience feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

The cost for APS-CAT is $100. Preregistration is required.

CO*RE Provides Education about E/LA Opioids

The Collaborative for REMS Education, or CO*RE is a 7-year old, 12-Partner collaboration co-founded by APS, dedicated to providing our member learners with effective, high-quality education about extended-release/long-acting (ER/LA) opioids, bridging practice gaps in this challenging clinical area, improving patient care and raising awareness of the associated ER/LA REMS.

CO*RE partners represent more than 730,000 physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Our membership ties enable direct access to these clinicians via established communication channels and high-impact live meetings.

In addition, we reach beyond the CO*RE membership to the greater prescriber population through additional live and online education, as well as our exclusive partnership with Medscape, the largest online membership of US health care professionals.

To date, via four grants, CO*RE has implemented 564 CE/CME activities reaching more than 276,230 learners. 34,736 have prescribed an ER/LA opioid within the past year of taking the CO*RE education. Average post-test scores with the CO*RE curriculum are 80 percent. Beyond successful metrics, test scores and outcomes, learners repeatedly relay comments about the quality and positive impact of their educational experience.

In early April, CO*RE will launch a significantly revised and updated curriculum incorporating key elements of the May 2016 FDA Advisory Committee’s unanimous recommendations:

Contextualizing pain
Thorough inclusion of IR/SA opioids, and
Reference to the CDC Guidelines.