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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1541403
A Cross-Sectional Survey Unveiling the Imperatives for Continuing Education and Discipline Development in Pain Medicine
Provisionally accepted- 1 Yinzhou No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2 First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Objective: To understand the existing problems and needs in continuing education for pain medicine, and to explore the significance of continuing education for the development of the discipline.A questionnaire was distributed online in the form of an e-Questionaire link to the directors of the Pain Medicine Departments of 417 hospitals (covered all hospitals) in Zhejiang Province. This questionnaire aimed to identify the problems and needs in continuing education for pain medicine. Subsequently, a questionnaire link was sent to 163 physicians nationwide who had undergone advanced training in the Pain Medicine Department to survey the existing problems and needs in advanced training.The survey revealed uneven development of pain medicine, with secondary hospitals notably lagging in pain clinic establishment (51.3% vs. 69.9% in tertiary hospitals). The number of pain physicians is insufficient, and their overall academic qualifications need to be improved. Most directors (81.9%) have a strong willingness to enhance their professional capabilities, recommending advanced training. The number of advanced trainee has increased significantly, most physicians said that inpatient teaching accounts for about 3/4 of the advanced training duration. Case-based learning is the most popular between instructors (93.3%) and advanced trainees (82.2%). 46% of physicians reported no outpatient exposure, highlighting insufficient clinical practice opportunities. Additionally, Most advanced trainees (93.3%) are satisfied with their instructors.Conclusions ： The findings from this cross-sectional survey underscore the pressing need for a more robust and standardized continuing education framework in pain medicine.
Keywords: pain medicine, Continuing medical education, Advanced Training, Survey, disciplinary development
Received: 20 Dec 2024; Accepted: 17 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jiang, Li, Peng, Zhang, Feng and Kang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zhiying Feng, First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Xianhui Kang, First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
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