The new Australian Standards for Health Practitioner Pain Management Education are the first component of the National Strategy for Health Practitioner Pain Management Education to be completed, establishing a strategic road map for upskilling the Australian health workforce in contemporary, evidence-based pain care with the aim of improving the health outcomes of people living with pain. 

A presentation at the recent Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting in Adelaide provided pain practitioners and educators with an overview of the standards, which were officially launched by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists in late March. 

The standards are intended to apply across all health disciplines and levels of training, including pre-licensure training, and support a wide range of practitioners involved in caring for people living with acute or chronic pain. 

This includes both registered professionals regulated by Ahpra and self-regulated health workers such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioners, exercise physiologists, nursing assistants and disability and aged care workers. 

Dr Noam Winter, head of pain services at Alfred Health, senior lecturer at Monash University and a member of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists’ Faculty of Pain Medicine, opened the session by providing a background to the development of the standards.

‘When we think about what contributes to the current landscape and the negative landscape that patients who live with pain experience, one thing that consistently emerges is that there’s a lack of consistent pain education that health practitioners have. 

‘We’ve all experienced pain. 

‘Pain is a universal experience. 

‘So, when we then interact with people who have pain and that doesn’t go away, it’s really hard to understand what might contribute to that, so we often rationalise or project onto things. 

‘We almost “other” them and that contributes to a degree of stigma that patients living with chronic pain face,’ Noam told the audience. 

Noam said that in the Australian Government’s National Strategic Action Plan for Pain Management published in 2021, one of the eight goals was specifically about the development of an educational strategy for all healthcare practitioners. 

Subsequently, in 2023, the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists’ Faculty of Pain Medicine developed and launched its National Strategy for Health Practitioner Pain Management Education with funding from the Australian Government. 

The Australian Standards for Health Practitioner Pain Management Education are the first of five goals outlined in this strategy, forming a transdisciplinary standard that can build capability, capacity and coherence across the health workforce to deliver quality educational training of health practitioners with the ultimate aim of improving health outcomes and care experiences for patients. 

Noam noted that there was extensive stakeholder engagement in developing the standards, with more than 260 diverse cross-sectoral stakeholders, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and culturally and linguistically diverse representation, to inform a collaborative process in drafting the standards. 

The resulting six standards are: 

• a person-centred approach to care 
• best practice education 
• evidence-based content 
• reflective practice
• communication 
• a collaborative approach to care. 

Noam said the project will now be moving on to an implementation stage, with the Faculty of Pain Medicine being awarded more Australian Government funding to develop resources and engage with stakeholders to implement fit-for-purpose education programs. 

He said that while different health professions might approach implementation of the standards differently, the standards should underpin their pain education programs. 

Following Noam’s introduction to the standards, Professor Helen Slater FACP, a Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist (as awarded by the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 2007), academic and researcher at Curtin University, took the stage. 

Helen shared a story shared by Kate, a person with lived experience and someone who also contributed to developing the standards, about her pain journey. 

Kate noted that ‘pain is not something you should go through alone’ and that validation of someone’s pain and education about chronic pain can open up a pathway to diagnosis, treatment and support. 

Helen said the standards provide a framework for educating health professionals on person-centred quality pain care regardless of the discipline. 

‘As a clinician… one of the toughest things to be able to do is having shared language between you and the person, and you and colleagues, so that we’re on the same page. 

‘The standards give us a blueprint to do that,’ she said. 

Helen returned to what she said was the most important thing – putting the person experiencing pain at the centre of their care and understanding the person’s priorities, needs and context to shape that care. 

‘The person is telling you what their problems are. 

‘Let’s have a look at it and try to understand it and then we can inform care together, in genuine partnership. 

‘The standards outline how pain management training efforts should meet quality criteria to show how training builds skills in communication, reflective practice and then best evidence as part of the toolkit to bring care to that person in a personalised way.’ 

Helen said there was a need to implement the pain education standards including embedding them early within and across the university curricula for the emerging health workforce, agnostic to discipline, and including physiotherapy. 

Download the standards here.