Grant: Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) program

Chronic pain affects one in five Canadians and is a major source of personal suffering. Canada's Action Plan for Pain calls on health professional education programs to include people living with pain in teaching future clinicians. This strategy is designed to help students develop key skills like communication, relationship-building, and person-centred care, skills that are essential for quality pain management but often overlooked in training. Despite strong support, very few programs have adopted this approach, partly because no studies have shown how it affects student learning. To address this gap, we created a new educational activity called VOICE, where physiotherapy 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 impact of pain. Early testing suggests this activity helps students see pain in new ways and better understand how to support people living with it. This fellowship will test whether it is feasible to deliver VOICE across Canadian physiotherapy programs in preparation for a larger national trial. We will examine whether students can be successfully enrolled and complete study measures, and whether the program can be delivered consistently across universities. This research will generate the first feasibility evidence on involving people with lived experience in physiotherapy education, laying the groundwork for a larger study that could advance Canada's Action Plan for Pain and improve care for millions of Canadians living with pain.