Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine Fellowship Educational Guidelines by Program Directors

This book offers a comprehensive review of essential medical knowledge topics that pain fellows need to acquire to successfully graduate a Pain Medicine Fellowship Program. It enhances local curriculum in pain fellowships across the nation and offers standardized education of trainees while also serving as a reference for practitioners and trainees worldwide. The book serves several purposes:

• Guides and standardizes teaching curriculum for the 120 ACGME accredited pain fellowships and about 200+ non-ACGME accredited fellowships
• Offers trainees key references essential for their education and future career development
• Serves as board preparation material
• Guides pain program directors on developing a program-specific and fellow-specific curriculum tailored towards own institution

Chapters follow a natural progression from basic science to topics on interventions, surgeries and emerging techniques in pain medicine. The reader is guided and directed towards concepts needed  for progressing into becoming competent pain physicians. Together with introduction of essential topics in pain medicine, each chapter is introducing key publications that are requisite in learning the art and science of pain medicine. 

In the time where pain medicine is such a dynamic and innovation incubator, Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine Fellowship, will ensure that next generations of pain practitioners speak the basic common language of our specialty and advance best practices in pain medicine.

Part I. Educational guidelines for Multidisciplinary pain medicine fellowship: pain taxonomy, chronic pain syndromes, Pain Assessment, non procedural interventions for chronic pain, opioid management.- Chapter 1. Background and History of Pain Medicine Fellowship in the United States; Vinicius Tieppo Francio, Magdalena Anitescu, Dalia Elmofty, Scott Brancolini, Boris Spektor, Christopher Sobey, Puneet Mishra, Sayed Wahezi, and Lynn Kohan.- Chapter 2. Basic Medical knowledge for pain fellow; Magda Anitescu, Scott Brancolini, Boris Spektor, Christopher Sobey, Puneet Mishra, Dalia Elmofty, Sayed Wahezi, and Lynn Kohan.- Chapter 3. Clinical states of pain (taxonomy); Mike Hooten and Ariana Nelson.- Chapter 4. Pain assessment and evaluation; Anuj Aggarwal, Meredith Barad, Stephanie Jones, Scott Pritzlaff, Alpana Gowda, and Ameet Nagpal.- Chapter 5. Non-procedural interventions for Chronic pain; Lynn Kohan and Mike Hooten.- Chapter 6. Use of opioids in chronic pain management; Ameet Nagpal and Gina Vota-Velis.- Part II. Educational guidelines for Multidisciplinary pain medicine fellowship: Cancer pain, procedural and surgical interventions for chronic and cancer pain, practice management, legal and research matters.- Chapter 7. Cancer pain and supportive care: assessment, evaluation and treatment; Gina Vota-velis, Nancy Beckman, Monica Malec, Josh Russell, Vasyl Herera, Amy Siston, and Magda Anitescu.- Chapter 8. Procedural interventions in pain medicine; Paul Scholten, Dmitri Souza, Rene Przkora, Jason S. Eldridge, Yashar Eshraghi, Sahil Gupta, and Terry Hunt II.- Chapter 9. Surgical interventions and emerging procedures in pain medicine; Rene Przkora, Juan Mora,, Matthew Meroney, Joshua Pan, Sanjeev Kumar, Ivan Samcam, Tian Yu, Lee Tian, Joe Donnelly, and Magdalena Anitescu.- Chapter 10: Setting up Fellows for Success; Rene Przkora, Ariana Nelson, Matthew Meroney, Nicholas Russo, and Magdalena Anitescu.- Chapter 11. Enhancing practice value; Sayed Wahezi and Susie Moeschler.

Dr Anitescu, Professor of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, is Section Chief of Pain Management Services and Program Director for the Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine Fellowship at the University of Chicago.

She has been involved in advancing the field of pain medicine for more than 20 years with her contributions to more than 40 peer reviewed articles as well as numerous book chapters. She is the editor to several pain textbooks and the series editor for the Oxford University Press, Anesthesia Problem Based learning, a series of 10 books, recently published.

Dr Anitescu has been shaping the education in pain medicine for over 15 years in her leadership positions for Association of pain program directors (APPD) and association of anesthessiology subspecialty program directors (AAASPD). She is currently Past president of both. A founding member of Women in Neuromodulation more than 10 years ago, she is a Past Chair of this organization.

She holds leadership positions in American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) where she is the Past-Chair of the Committee on Problem Based Learning Discussions. She chaired the 2020 American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRAPM) Fall Annual Meeting and she is a founding member and past chair of the ASRA  Cancer and Supportive Care Special Interest group. she chaired was the Meeting Chair for the Fall Meeting 2020. A recipient of the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS) Lisa Stearns award for innovative contribution in cancer pain treatment, she chaired the 30 year Anniversary NANS Annual Meeting in 2024. She has been a member of Scientific Planning committees for the last 10 years in many professional organizations (ASA, ASRA, NANS, INS, SAAAPM)

She has been elected and serves as President Elect of NANS, formerly being a Director at large of the same organization as well as a board member of the international Neuromodulation Society (INS).

She is an accomplished educator and speaker to national and international meetings (ASRA, ASA, ESRA, NANS, INS, AAPM, SAAAPM); during her career she mentored numerous generations of pain physicians.

Her research focuses on various mechanisms of action of neuromodulation devices in improving clinical outcomes of chronic pain and she is a PI for several clinical trials on this topic. Other research topics include infusion therapies in traumatic injuries and chronic pain of sickle cell disease as well as use of neuromodulation to improve vascular changes in diabetes. She has conducted successful research on the treatment of vertebral body metastases as well as evaluation and treatment of psychologic co-morbidities in chronic pain.