Palliative Care: Pain Management for your Patients

Understand pain management with the University of Colorado

Palliative care provides important support for people living with serious or life-limiting illnesses and their family caregivers.

On this five-week course, you’ll develop tools for assessing and managing pain in seriously ill people. One of a series on palliative care from the University of Colorado, the course will give you the knowledge and skills you need to ease distress for people in your care.

Understand the types, causes, and symptoms of pain

Before you can begin developing tools for supporting patients, you need to be able to define their symptoms. The course will start with an introduction to pain and pain assessment.

You’ll learn to identify types of pain and recognise their causative factors. You’ll also examine some of the most common and distressing symptoms, such as loss of appetite, fatigue, delirium, and nausea.

Investigate treatments and therapy for pain

The next phase of the course focuses on the management of these common symptoms of pain. You’ll discover the medication available for treating symptoms, as well as non-medical approaches and therapies.

You’ll be able to use these approaches to help patients and caregivers manage their emotional response to pain and distress.

At the end of the five weeks, you’ll have a toolbox of practical insights, skills, and strategies to draw on when caring for the seriously ill.

This course is primarily designed for healthcare providers working with seriously ill patients and their families. This includes nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and allied health professionals (e.g. social workers, spiritual care providers, mental health professionals, therapists).

It will also be valuable for families, friends, and communities supporting the seriously ill.

This course is primarily designed for healthcare providers working with seriously ill patients and their families. This includes nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and allied health professionals (e.g. social workers, spiritual care providers, mental health professionals, therapists).

It will also be valuable for families, friends, and communities supporting the seriously ill.

• Explain pain and recognize causative factors and types of pain in the seriously ill.
• Practice a multidimensional pain assessment of the palliative care patient.
• Identify nontraditional and common integrative strategies to enhance patient comfort and satisfaction.
• Investigate various classes of non-opioid pain medications to know how they work differently.
• Describe the mechanism of action of opioids to know when to use them, in addition to non-opioid pain medications, for pain management.
• Develop a comprehensive plan of care for management of a patient with pain.