End of Life Care

Achieving Excellence In Biopsychosocial Cancer Pain Management Through A Comprehensive Quality Education Program

  • PIs:                  Sydney Dy, MD, MSc, Jim Zabora, ScD, MSW
  • Funder:           National Cancer Institute, NIH
  • Status:             Ongoing

Pain management is critical throughout cancer care, particularly in long-term survivorship and in advanced disease. Cancer pain is often challenging and interacts with many issues, including psychosocial concerns and other symptoms, especially fatigue and sleep disturbances. A key solution, using a biopsychosocial approach, considers biological aspects in the context of other symptoms and interactions with psychological (e.g., distress) and social (e.g., family) factors.

This project will implement and evaluate a national curriculum for training cancer health care professionals in biopsychosocial pain management and quality improvement. The patient-centered education program will build on the extensive blended learning health professional education programs at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in collaboration with City of Hope’s supportive oncology skills-based education programs. In a 15-week program, participants will complete 5 webinars, an online simulation, a 2-day intensive skills-based workshop, and 2 pre- and 2 post-workshop faculty-participant small group conference calls.

The aims are to:

  1. Implement a curriculum for training healthcare professionals in biopsychosocial cancer pain management and quality improvement
  2. Sustain and refine newly acquired pain management and quality improvement skills through ongoing support and reinforcement and building a networking community
  3. Evaluate the impact of the education and sustainability throughout the award

Training

Skills Training in Biopsychosocial Cancer Pain Management
Supported by the National Cancer Institute R25CA225485

This innovative hands-on program includes: 5 e-learning webinars, an online simulation, a 2-day skills-based workshop at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD, 4 faculty-trainee conference calls, a web-based Discussion Board and ongoing faculty support. This intensive skills-based program is designed to provide you with clinical and implementation skills to provide nonpharmacological cancer pain and implement these approaches in your cancer care settings. The training program will be limited to 40 people for the first workshop. Limited travel funds are available; lodging and training is at no cost.

When:

Next workshop: March 4-5, 2020 (tentative) in Baltimore, MD.
Applications will open by 11/1/2019, will be due 2/1/2020 with notifications by 3/1/2020.
For more information, email cancerpain@jhu.edu.