'The Time is Now for Better Pain Care for Patients' - Physician Leaders from Across Medicine Conclude from a Closed-Door P...( 'The science is in place. Why are so...),Health

'The science is in place. Why are so many suffering?'

GLENVIEW, Ill., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pain medicine physicians from the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) continued to advance the call for better pain care as they joined with physician leaders from across the country in a closed-door National Pain Summit that took place adjacent to an AMA meeting last week in Houston, Texas.

AAPM leaders have been vigilant in advocating for better pain care for patients. They released AAPM's Pain Medicine Position Paper documenting how to address the need for better pain care earlier this fall. More recently, they signed the Mayday Fund's Call to Revolutionize Chronic Pain Report, which demonstrates the disparity between patient suffering and the under-accessed pain care.

"The Pain Summit confirmed that the felt need for better pain care in America reaches across all medical fields. Every day, tens of millions of U.S. citizens are suffering from immobilizing pain that affects their jobs, their families, and their spirit; frankly, our doctors are often not trained well enough and our health care system is not organized appropriately to be able to help these patients. We can offer better care. We have the clinical science to start the process. But, funding is needed to educate patients and the public, to streamline medical systems, and to improve and standardize the education of medical students, the training of residents in all specialties, and the training of pain medicine specialists," AAPM President Rollin M. Gallagher, MD, MPH, explained.

The closed-door discussions in the Pain Summit were focused on several dominant themes:

• Better pain care is available for patients, but is not being accessed.
• Education on pa
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