Toast said:
I'm planning to do a month of pain management and would like to know what I'll learn during this period. I finished one month of anesthesiology primarily working in the OR and had a lot of hands-on experience. How is pain management different? Is there a lot of hands-on experience too? What should I expect to learn?
Depends on the program you are rotating at. I am assuming you are a medical student. You should be taught a multimodal approach to pain that will teach you to use psychotherapy, physiotherapy/physical therapy, medications, and procedures in a step wise fashion.
You will learn which medications to use under which situations (NSAIDS, opiods, long acting opiods, muscle relaxants, anticonvulsants, membrane stabilizers, etc.). There are some small handbooks on pain management that I have seen but not read at the book store that would probably be worth purchasing. Make sure whichever one you consider has a good section on medications as I have seen some larger texts that were in essence, "My opinion on pain and why you should use my philosophy."
The procedures you will likely have opportunity to participate in are epidural steroid injections (cervical, thoracic, lumbar), transforaminal epidural steroid injections, facet injections, ilioinguinal/iliohypogastric injections/ablations, and median branch nerve injections/radiofrequency ablations.
Here is a website with multiple pain management links. Enjoy your experience.
http://fmscanbera.tripod.com/pain/painlinks.htm
