Curriculum/Schedule

The Inpatient Pain Service provides experience in the management of acute and postoperative pain. On this service the fellow and anesthesia residents are responsible for all postoperative pain patients, in-house consultations and inpatient admissions.

The fellow will learn the principles and practical management of continuous epidural analgesia, patient controlled analgesia, continuous intravenous analgesia, and regional anesthetic procedures for postoperative pain management. 

The fellow will also gain some experience in chronic cancer pain management during this time through the management of in-house consultations. Fellows will take at-home pager call every other week during this rotation.

Pain Service

Rotations at the Pain Control Center at the UC Health Pain Center and the University of Cincinnati Medical Center Pain Center provide experience in the multidisciplinary management of chronic pain syndromes. A variety of chronic pain syndromes are treated through an outpatient multidisciplinary approach. Low back, headache, sympathetic and non-sympathetic neurogenic, post herpetic and cancer pain syndromes are all represented.

Chronic Pain Management

Fellows may request a one-month elective on the Pediatric Pain Service. Active involvement on the service includes use of regional anesthesia for acute and chronic pain management in children at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the busiest pediatric surgery center in the United States.

Pediatric Pain Management

The Pain Fellowship Program provides a comprehensive didactic program, which adheres to the ACGME and IASP core curriculum education in pain medicine. The didactic program includes fellow initiated reading club weekly, in addition to the fellow curriculum lectures that are delivered every Wednesday morning by pain faculty. In addition to these weekly lectures, once a month a Journal Club is conducted to review the latest advances in pain medicine. Invited lecturers from other specialties are invited for dinner presentations once every month. Departmental Morbidity and Mortality conferences are regularly held for quality assurance and improvement in patient care. Research seminars are presented by the Department of Anesthesiology research faculty periodically.

Fellows will also be expected to be actively involved in resident and medical student teaching. Fellows are required to take a lecture for rotating pain residents every Friday afternoon. In addition, fellows will present one Grand Round presentation for the department during their fellowship year.

Interventional Experience and Cadaver Sessions

Fellows will have advanced training in interventional pain medicine during their fellowship year. In addition to supervised training and education in the procedure rooms and operating room, fellows will have once every two month, a Cadaver session for learning principles and perfecting advanced techniques of interventional pain management.

Research is encouraged but is not a mandatory requirement for this fellowship. Each fellow may select an area of interest and design and develop a basic science or clinical study project in the area of pain management. The project should be discussed with a pain faculty member and submitted to the Research Committee, at least three months prior to the proposed start date of the study. Each project should have a staff advisor and co-investigator to provide guidance in design and development of the project. Fellows may also participate in department’s ongoing clinical and basic science research.

During the Inpatient Pain Service rotation, the pain fellow will take one week at home backup beeper call. On weekdays, fellow will be required to provide backup for the in-house anesthesiology resident for acute pain problems and for the after-hour calls from patients seen at the TUH clinic. 

On the weekend, the fellow will conduct patient rounds with the faculty on call and provide backup for the in-house anesthesiology resident after direct patient care rounds. The pain faculty on call will be responsible for providing supervision for the on-call fellow.

All cases requiring pain management must be discussed with the attending faculty prior to proceeding with the treatment plan. Performance of procedures by the Pain Fellows will be supervised at all times by the attending faculty.