Pain management in international curricula for undergraduate education in palliative medicine. A palliative education assessment tool (PEAT) analysis

Background In the context of undergraduate medical education, there is the question of overlap between palliative medicine and pain management. International curricula for palliative medicine were analyzed with regard to the content concerning pain management. Methods Available international curricula were sought through general search engines (Google, Medline/Pubmed) in the German and English languages. The palliative care education assessment tool (PEAT), a validated instrument for curricula mapping, was used for detection of pain management content. The PEAT comprises 7 domains and 83 objectives. Domain II (pain) contains 12 items (15%). Additional pain management content was analyzed qualitatively. Results Between 1993 and 2011 16 international curricula for undergraduate education in palliative medicine were identified and every curriculum contained PEAT-domain II (pain). Altogether, 2-65 out of 83 PEAT objectives and 0-11 specific pain-related PEAT objectives were included as learning content. Hence, the latter define 0-21% of the contents of the analyzed curricula. The only additional topic was "breakthrough pain" which was mentioned in 4 out of 16 curricula. Conclusions Pain-related objectives are regularly mentioned in international undergraduate palliative medicine curricula. The extent is limited and therefore the concordance to general pain management is low.