Essential Pain Management (EPM) is a short, easily deliverable. cost-effective, multi-disciplinary program established in 2010 by ANZCA fellows Dr Roger Goucke and Dr Wayne Morriss following discussions with anaesthetists in Papua New Guinea (PNG) about the lack of training opportunities for pain management in that country.
EPM aims to:
- Improve pain knowledge.
- Teach health workers to "recognise, assess and treat pain" (RAT).
- Address pain management barriers.
- Train local health workers to teach EPM.
The Essential Pain Management program is designed for any health worker who comes in contact with patients who have pain.
The "recognise, assess and treat pain" (RAT) approach can be applied to pain of all types (acute or chronic, cancer or non-cancer) and can be used by all types of health workers, including doctors, nurses, clinic workers and pharmacists.
To date EPM courses have been run in over 60 countries.
In this video EPM instructors and participants in PNG discuss how the program works and why there is a need for such a program in PNG and across the world.
Find out more about the Essential Pain Management program
EPM Online provides a primer in the essentials of pain management. It covers the tools that can be used to recognise, assess, and treat pain. It isn't intended to replace face-to-face EPM, but adds an additional, accessible resource to the EPM suite of education.
The Essential Pain Management program consists of two parts – the EPM one-day workshop and the EPM instructor workshop.
Access a range of Essential Pain Management program resources, including manuals, slides, reporting tools, publications, and the EPM App.