Which pain meetings to attend during fellowship?

[Ligament]

Hi All,

I'm looking over the HUGE choice of pain meetings and workshops on Algos' website

http://www.algosresearch.org/Education/PainConferences/Conferences2006.html

I have some conference time to use...wondering which meetings and/or workshops would be best to attend this year.

I suppose the top priority should be a large international conference in which I could network and job hunt. Which would be best for this? Maybe American Academy of Pain Management Annual Meeting Disney World Swan and Dolphin, Florida?

Maybe the AAPMR meeting in Hawaii?

BTW, I'm a physiatrist in an anesthisiology pain fellowship if it matters.

thanks for your thoughts.

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[Aether2000]

Perhaps it would help if you knew the "flavor" of these meetings:

ISIS Annual Meeting: True International meeting with a penchant towards safety, standards, and some cutting edge stuff, but this year's meeting had outstanding physicians from other organizations presenting (Stanton-Hicks, Racz, etc)

American Academy of Pain Management: science and belief systems mixed together to produce an interesting meeting if you can filter out the non-medical items. Attended by large numbers of nurses, chiropractors, naturopathic doctors, etc.

American Academy of Pain Medicine: Excellent survey and overview...balanced science, politics, and medication/interventional approach.

ASIPP Annual meeting: Interesting mix of science and politics. ASIPP has the largest and most active political wing of all pain organizations and gives a half million a year in political contributions to steer potentially wayward congressmen back to the ASIPP way. Their current president (VJ) is a dedicated, intelligent, very hard working, real pain doc with his own active practice.

NASS: a massive meeting devoted to spine only, mainly allows one to appreciate the viewpoints of the surgeons but there are some tasty morsels thrown in for pain physicians. Carragee is frequently presenting his usual miserable outcome studies for discography.

IITS: mainly surgical but there is a significant amount of cutting edge minimally invasive disc research presented that may benefit us in the near future. European style meeting with rapid paced lectures that are timed at 10-15 min

SPPM: very broad overview of pain medicine including business aspects. Exhaustive and exhausting coverage of nearly everything in lectures and presentations starting at 7:30 am and potentially ending at 9 pm.

WIP: overview of a wide array of techniques, some of them quite unique. You will always learn something you didn't know at WIP in Texas or Budapest.

APS: not terribly useful to the interventionalist....lots of great basic science, psych, PT. The best basic science pain conference in the country.

 

[Ligament]

Hey Algos, THANKS for the info as always. We fellows should pay you a stipend for your info.

Which conference would be best for job hunting? I have a primary interest in spine with a secondary interest in neuropathic pain.

 

[Aether2000]

Good question....I would assume NASS, but some of the other guys may have more experience than I. I have not looked for a job in many years so I am sort of out of that loop.

 

[Disciple]

Which conference would be best for job hunting? I have a primary interest in spine with a secondary interest in neuropathic pain.

I've been wondering about this question as well. I would assume that it depends on what type of practice you see yourself in.

I've noticed alot of Physiatrists like ISIS and NASS.

Spine focus/Spine Center: Probably NASS, ISIS
Comprehensive Pain: ASIPP, ASRA, AAPM?
MSK with some injections: AAPMR, ACSM, AANEM?

 

[wonthurtabit1]

Hey Algos, THANKS for the info as always. We fellows should pay you a stipend for your info.

Which conference would be best for job hunting? I have a primary interest in spine with a secondary interest in neuropathic pain.

Re: what algos said re: NASS -- "NASS: a massive meeting devoted to spine only, mainly allows one to appreciate the viewpoints of the surgeons but there are some tasty morsels thrown in for pain physicians. Carragee is frequently presenting his usual miserable outcome studies for discography."

This year should be a better balance of general spine, not just surgery. This year's president is Joel Press, MD Physiatrist and Director of the Spine and sports med fellowship at the Rehab Institute of Chicago. Heidi Prather, DO (also a fellowship director) is one of the directors of the education program. I imagine more PMR docs than usual will attend. I find that NASS is a very important conference for the PMR/pain docs to attend -- to find out what the surgeons are up to. Then we can work to select the best surgical candidates ahead of time... or figure out how to clean up afterwards if things don't go well.

Regarding job hunting, for PMR, the AAPMR conference is probably best. But hopefully you've gotten quite a few interviews and leads prior to November.