Ep. 119 – Increasing Pain Management Education: Dr. Phyllis L. Hendry, University of Florida

Greg interviews Dr. Phyllis L. Hendry, a professor of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, and the Assistant Chair of Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine in Jacksonville, Florida. Dr. Hendry and her team have developed an online education patient safety initiative called P.A.M.I. (Pain Assessment and Management Initiative).

Greg asks Dr. Hendry about how P.A.M.I. was developed and what the education platform hopes to achieve. Dr. Hendry explains that she first began thinking about improving pain management education due to her experience in training Emergency Medicine and Pediatric fellows as well as her close proximity to family members with chronic pain. She says that she felt there was a void in pain education. “Pain is really very complex. There are different types of pain, there’s acute pain, chronic pain, procedural pain – I really felt there was just a lack of knowledge, so I wanted to do something to address that.” She furthers that though her initial plan was simply to improve education for healthcare providers, it morphed into something far more involved. “…My initial plan was really to improve education among physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other healthcare providers regarding pain management… So that’s how it started, and then about this time the whole opioid issue started and pain became more and more important. At the same time, the field of pain management has really grown; the research we have, the way pain develops – there’s just a lot more information. And then it just morphed into this huge project with all types of spinoffs. [At first], I just wanted to have some online educational modules that were free access and then that grew into a dosing guide and a discharge planning toolkit, and numerous other P.A.M.I. projects.”

Listen to the podcast to discover how P.A.M.I. provides both physicians and patients with free access to pain management education videos, dosing guides, and discharge plans to make sure patients are fully aware of their options.