Graduate Certificate in Pain Management (Rehabilitation Medicine)

Pain is a condition that is undertreated, mistreated and misunderstood. To further complicate the problem, health professionals are ill-equipped to treat people with chronic pain because they receive little training about it during their health education careers. The certificate in pain management represents a unique opportunity to address current issues and gaps in the education of health care professionals about chronic pain management.

Designed for an inter-professional audience and using the latest in online learning technologies this program will: 1) increase the understanding and importance of an interdisciplinary approach to managing pain through an understanding of the unique and shared roles and responsibilities of various health care professionals on an interdisciplinary team in the assessment and management of chronic pain; 2) enable clinicians to use critical thinking and evidence-based approaches to develop assessment and treatment plans across the pain continuum with the emphasis on complex/chronic pain; and 3) make use of a bio-psycho-social clinical reasoning framework that integrates information across models in the assessment and treatment of pain. The intent of the program is to provide a postprofessional continuing education opportunity that prepares health care professionals to understand and improve their techniques in treating chronic pain.