Board Certified Pain Medicine physicians come from a myriad of core primary specialties, including anesthesiology, physical medicine & rehabilitation, neurology, and psychiatry. Doctors who have completed years of residency training in one of these specialties chooses to complete a Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine Fellowship (what is a pain fellowship?).
The specialty of Pain Medicine is growing, but not fast enough to meet the needs of our society. I prepared the infographic below as a slide for an invited lecture at the 2023 Virginia Pain Society.(Follow the link for the complete slide deck: What should we be doing – Michael Fishman, MD – 2023 VA Pain Soc)
Our ranks are expanding, with 25% increase in the number of pain physicians from 2016-2021, according to the American Medical Association. One in every five pain physicians is female, and two out of every three pain physicians is under 55 years old. However, given the scope of the chronic pain epidemic here in the US, this equates to 52,335 patients per pain physician using 2021 data.
How can we expand our accuracy and footprint to treat all these patients living with one or multiple painful condition(s)? There is an alphabet soup of potential chronic pain treatment adjacencies that are emerging and not mutually exclusive.
Here is my mediocre attempt at a quick A-Z list of cool stuff emerging in the diagnosis and treatment of pain. This includes broad topics, specific agents, and common sense.
Artificial Intelligence, Biomarkers, Clinical Decision Support, Data Science, Epigenetics, Functional MRI, Genotyping, electronic Health Records, Intercompatibility, Jokes (laughter is the best medicine), Ketamine, Lidocaine, Multifidus Restorative Stimulation, Neuromodulation, Orthobiologics, Phenotyping, Quantitative EEG, Radiofrequency Treatments, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Ultrasound, Virtual Reality, Wonder Drugs, X-ray Guidance, Yoga, Zzzzzzz – that’s sleep improvement stuff.