Pain Medicine Rotation

Anesthesia residents have one four-week rotation in inpatient and outpatient chronic pain, one four-week rotation in acute perioperative pain management, and two two-week rotations in acute and chronic pain medicine during the four years of anesthesia training. Residents work closely with fellows and faculty and are trained to become proficient consultants.

During the rotation through pain medicine, the resident is exposed to a spectrum of pain syndromes; clinical experience is gained in both acute and chronic pain. In the CA-1 year, the anesthesia resident gathers experience in the treatment of acute pain through a monthlong rotation in acute pain. In the subsequent years, the resident gains experience in chronic pain, moving in a graduated fashion through rotations in office-based outpatient pain management, inpatient pain, and the interventional procedural suite.

The chronic inpatient experience encompasses adult-care chronic and cancer-pain settings. Residents learn a multidisciplinary therapeutic approach that includes behavioral modalities, functional rehabilitation as well as oral analgesics, intravenous therapies, neuraxial and perineural drug infusions, and invasive modalities. The outpatient experience includes seeing patients with the core faculty in a consultative capacity and exposure to a wide variety of interventional techniques utilizing ultrasound technology as well as conventional radiography. This is performed in an interventional suite containing a state-of-the-art C-arm fluoroscopy unit and a two-bed recovery area.

In addition to this exposure in the course of the residency, CA-3 residents exploring pain management may elect to do additional rotations in pain management during which time the training focuses on increasing familiarity with complex conditions and advanced techniques in pain management or clinical research activity with faculty mentorship.