Physicians who dedicate their lives to treating chronic pain patients have a complex road ahead of them. Part of the confusion surrounding pain treatment is discerning the difference between pain medicine and pain management. All too often, these two terms get tossed around as if they mean the same thing.
What Is The Difference Between Pain Medicine And Pain Management?
While pain medicine and pain management are closely related, they aren’t identical. Pain medicine is a board-certified subspecialty focused on diagnosing and treating pain through medications, injections, and other medical procedures. Pain management, by contrast, is a broader, multidisciplinary approach that combines medical treatments with physical therapy, psychological support, lifestyle strategies, and complementary therapies to help patients cope with and reduce pain.
Pain Medicine
Pain medicine doctors walk an increasingly fine line between providing relief from their patients’ often excruciating pain and avoiding potential pain medication misuse. This balance can leave patients under-treated, suffering, and frustrated. This is where the distinction between pain medicine and pain management becomes important: pain medicine focuses on pain medication prescribing and procedural interventions such as epidural steroid injections and nerve blocking.
Pain Management
Meanwhile, pain management’s broader, team-based approach helps doctors address pain comprehensively using not just medications and procedures as mentioned previously, but also physical therapy, psychological support, lifestyle changes, and complementary therapies.
Bridging Pain Medicine with Pain Management Techniques
As physicians seek out new, effective remedies for their chronic pain patients, many have started relying on a multidisciplinary approach. By combining the pain medicine subspecialty and the pain management approach, doctors are bringing together specialists ranging from doctors and physical therapists to psychologists and complementary care providers, along with the use of medical interventions like injections or medications. This strategy not only eases symptoms but also helps patients regain function, build coping skills, and improve their quality of life.
Resources
Additional resources are available through continuing medical education providers, such as CMELIST's pain medicine and pain medicine programs, for readers interested in exploring current approaches to pain treatment and professional education in this field.