National Institutes of Health Gather New Findings in Chronic Pain Study

The National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium's Centers of Excellent in Pain Education program designed an online training module for the evaluation and care of chronic pain. The results of their case study provided some helpful information.

Experts at the University of Pittsburgh developed the module and used an elderly woman with chronic lower back pain named Edna to provide them with feedback in a variety of ways. The experts developed the module while focusing on common errors in clinical exams, expert modeling, and interactivity in order to gather all pertinent information regarding a patient.

In the study, 55 medical students were asked to participate. Before taking their objective structured clinical examinations, 27 received access to the newly developed module and 28 did not. Those who were granted access to the module, using the information provided by Edna, performed significantly better on their examination that measured clinical skills and knowledge.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study that has demonstrated the potential of an online interactive module to improve medical student clinical skills related to evaluating a patient with chronic pain," said the study's lead author Debra K. Weiner, M.D., in a news release. "While our module focused specifically on an older adult with chronic low back pain, we see this type of educational intervention as a powerful and efficient curriculum tool for a variety of patient scenarios."

The National Institutes of Health study, "E-Learning Module on Chronic Low Back Pain in Older Adults: Evidence of Effect on Medical Student Objective Structured Clinical Examination Performance," was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The module could be effective in treating patients with chronic pain, a seemingly widespread issue in the United States with over 100 million Americans suffering from it while racking up $635 billion in medical costs. Additionally, the module would provide more information about the patient, which can help the doctor assess their chronic pain issue and provide them with more constructive treatments rather than an opioid prescription.

It's an innovative idea, especially since electronic medical records are slowly taking over the industry.