Grant: Project Grant

Chronic pain affects one in five Canadians and is a major source of personal suffering. Canada's Action Plan for Pain calls on clinical education programs to include people living with pain in teaching future clinicians how to manage pain. This national strategy is designed to help students develop key skills - like communication, building strong therapeutic relationships and using a person-centred approach - that are essential for quality pain management, but are often overlooked in clinical programs. Despite strong support for this national strategy, very few clinical programs have adopted it. One reason is that no studies have tested whether involving people living with pain in teaching affects student learning. Another challenge is that the process of recruiting large groups of people living with pain to take part in clinical education is new and untested. To address these gaps, we created a new educational activity where clinical students have one-on-one conversations with people who live with chronic pain. These conversations are guided by themes identified as important by people living with pain themselves - such as stigma, mental health, and the personal suffering often associated with pain. Early testing suggests this activity helps clinical students see pain in new ways and better understand how to care for people living with it. In this study, we will test whether it is possible to run a larger randomized controlled trial across Canadian physiotherapy programs. We will look at whether physiotherapy students can be successfully enrolled and complete study measures, whether the intervention can be delivered consistently across programs, and whether people living with pain will participate in its implementation. This research will help determine whether this innovative educational approach can help clinical programs across the country achieve Canada's Action Plan for Pain strategy and improve care for the millions of Canadians living with pain.