Healthcare Professional Students' Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Chronic Pain Management.

Chronic pain is characterised by a protective mechanism of the neuro-immune-endocrine systems potentially exacerbated by loading exposures, conditioning, psychological, socio-economic, lifestyle, comorbid mental health and non-modifiables such as genetics, (O'Sullivan et al 2016). Pain education can be a useful basis for helping patients to manage their symptoms and return to good daily function. However a biomedical approach to chronic pain persists in medical communities, whilst persistent pain populations increase and incidences of opioid addiction are growing secondary to poor pain management. Biomedical models of pain are likely to induce fear avoidant behaviour and exacerbate chronicity (Wertli et al 2014). In order to change the prevailing biomedical approach to chronic pain the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) have provided detailed pain curricula content for different medical and allied health professional courses. Briggs et al (2015) found that out of 15 'representative European countries' less than a handful of universities from 3 countries had implemented distinctly identifiable pain education teaching. However they may be other forms of pain education that are taking place in pre-registration healthcare professional education. This study aims to establish the levels of chronic pain management knowledge and attitudes prevail in the UK and Ireland amongst pre-registration healthcare professionals.

Inclusion criteria

• pre-registration healthcare student, BSc or MSc.

Exclusion criteria

• post-registration students