Thought Leaders Discuss the Standard of Care in Cancer Pain

CSC invited advocacy leaders from the Lung Cancer Alliance, CancerCare, ThyCA, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Zero?The Project to End Prostate Cancer and national pain experts to engage in a discussion on how to raise the standard of care in cancer pain management.? Sponsored by Archimedes Pharma, special focus was given to breakthrough pain ? episodic pain that has an acute onset and lasts for a relatively short duration against the backdrop of background pain.? The meeting took place in West Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, PA at the beautiful location of CSC?s the Research & Training Institute.?

Dr. Lidia Schapira, medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School outlined the complex challenges that healthcare providers face in identifying and treating pain.? Her presentation was poignantly moving. You cannot talk about pain without bringing up suffering. Empathy and compassion fatigue among treating oncologists is often an unidentified but significant barrier to effective care and proposed patient-centered solutions to alleviate barriers to effective doctor-patient communication around pain.?? ?Understanding why pain remains untreated is important and will help identify opportunities for improvement.?

Brenda Breuer, PhD, MPH, Director Of Epidemiologic Research, Dept of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at Beth Israel Medical Center focused on her research around the impact of current MD and other health care professionals? attitudes about pain management on cancer care.

June Eilers, RN, PhD, The Nebraska Medical Center outlined barriers and potential solutions in diagnosing cancer pain and helped the group brainstorm key elements of a standardized cancer pain assessment approach.? These lively discussions were followed by Yvette Colon, PhD, ACSW, Psychosocial Specialist at the MetaCancer Foundation, who recapped key learnings from the American Pain Foundation 2010 Roundtable.

Joanne Buzaglo, VP of Research & Training kicked off the day with a presentation entitled: Of Silent Voices and Unseen Faces, outlining preliminary findings from a Breaking Through survey of cancer survivors.? The majority of cancer patients with breakthrough pain are not being diagnosed, even though over half are experiencing acute episodic pain at least once a week, many of whom experience breakthrough pain at least once a day, sometimes 3-4 times a day.?

Taken together, Mitch Golant, Senior VP and Vicki Kennedy, VP of Program Development & Delivery led a robust discussion around ideas to raise awareness, and elevate the standard of care through research, programs, and education.?

After a day of discussions, the group of advocates pledged to maintain a dialogue and find innovative ways to find a common language to talk about cancer pain and raise the level of awareness across all stakeholders ? including the patients, their families, and the health care team.? Stay tuned as we take the next steps together in moving the conversation forward on cancer pain.

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