Why do we need a School for Clinical and Instrumental Diagnostic Processes in Pain Medicine?

 

There are several reasons all of which are related to the increased number of doctors from different medical branches involved in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain (i.e. in pain medicine); the need to guarantee the best available diagnostic procedures on equal basis to all EU Citizens, streamlined to the perceivable and widespread reduction in the budgets of the various national health services.

 

The fact that many specialists from different branches are increasingly involved in pain medicine is certainly a reason of cultural richness. However this also creates a point of weakness: the lack of uniformity in the clinical approach to the patient and in some way also in the different use of the various available diagnostic tools.

 

Not with standing the increasing interest in pain medicine, only very few doctors work in structured multidisciplinary teams were the various specialists work within the specific frame of pain medicine and therefore the results of the various instrumental findings can be correctly discussed and understood. The majority of the professionals involved in pain medicine work in multidisciplinary teams which only rely on external support of other specialists whose diagnostic results are not always edible for the pain clinician.

Unfortunately too many doctors, especially in those Countries which have recently joined the EU, still work without a real and targeted support from other specialists. Moreover the increasing complexity of single and specific instrumental diagnostics makes their task even more difficult.

 

A progressive reduction in the various national health service budgets imposes the need for. all of them to optimize the costs of instrumental examinations by means of a better and widely accepted diagnostic flowchart.

 

Within an enlarged EU community and in the respect of the rights of all European Citizens to receive adequate and uniform treatments all over Europe, there is the need to have a minimum common denominator in the clinical approach. Learn how to better use the instrumental tools and how to improve the interpretation skills of the various instrumental reports, which are not always tailored for the diagnosis of “pain as a disease”.

 

For the few who already work in a real multidisciplinary team, the School will help them to better use their budgets as well as to refine their clinical approach and to improve their ability to challenge the position of other specialists.  For many of those not working in a multidisciplinary team or with only an external support, the School, within a common clinical approach, will give the skill to better interpret the various diagnostic responses with a more tailored cost-benefit ratio.

 

The aim and program of the School presented so far, goes to fill a lack in the formative offer actually available for young doctors in Europe.

 

Specific goals and objectives of the School (under EFIC supervision)

• Support the concept of pain as a disease

• Improve the clinical examination skills of the participants

• Define a core set of diagnostic tools  for pain as a disease

• Define what kind of instrumental evaluation should/could be done by the pain specialist

• Promote the consistency of instrumental diagnostic procedures in pain medicine

• Improve the clinicians' skill to plan a correct instrumental diagnostic path in pain medicine

• Improve the understanding of the diagnostic tools available in the diagnosis of pain

• Define a flow chart on the evaluation of cost/benefit

• Allow the participants to appropriately utilize all the available diagnostic tools at their best

• Allow the participants to correctly interpret the findings of  many of the most utilized tools from other specialists

• Allow the participants to use some of the most valuable bed side tests in pain medicine