Please pardon cross-postings, etc. Thank you.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=751&e=5&u=/nm/20030908/\
hl_nm/health_pain_dc

U.S. Medical Students to Get Pain Course Online
Mon Sep 8, 2:31 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saying most U.S. medical
schools are failing to teach physicians how to treat
pain, leading doctors on Monday said they were
introducing an online pain course for medical
students.

The Internet-based course will focus on the causes and
treatment of pain, according to the American Academy
of Pain Medicine, which is sponsoring the course.

It cited a survey that found 57 percent of Americans
suffered from chronic or recurrent pain in the past
year. The survey of 1,000 adults by the nonprofit
group ResearchAmerica found that 62 percent of these
people said they had been in pain for more than a year
and 40 percent were in pain all of the time.

Only 3 percent of medical schools have a separate
required course on pain management, and just 4 percent
require a course in end-of-life care, according to
another survey of 125 medical schools compiled by the
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The medical school survey found roughly half of all
2003 medical school graduates believed they had not
been taught enough about pain.

"If we are to effectively treat a future generation of
pain patients, we first must educate that next
generation of doctors who will care for them," said
Dr. Jordan Cohen, AAMC president.

"Untreated pain, tragically, is an epidemic in the
United States," former Health and Human Services (news
- web sites) Secretary Dr. Louis Sullivan, who is
helping put together the new course, told a news
conference.

U.S. businesses lose about $100 billion every year
because of days taken off and reduced productivity due
to pain, as well as in direct medical and other
benefit costs, said former U.S. Surgeon General Dr.
David Satcher.

"Untreated pain turns otherwise productive lives into
an endless succession of agonizing days and sleepless
nights," said Satcher, now director of the National
Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of
Medicine in Atlanta.

Satcher's school will test the course starting this
month, along with the University of Connecticut School
of Medicine and the Texas College of Osteopathic
Medicine.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=751&e=5&u=/nm/20030908/\
hl_nm/health_pain_dc



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