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Preface

Fifteen years in the making, this book was first conceptualized as one of the potential outgrowths from the first‐year medical student course in pain at Johns Hopkins assembled by an interprofessional team of pain experts. In the ensuing years, tremendous changes have swept the globe impacting the practice of clinical care: The North American opioid crisis has raised awareness about the perils of medication‐based approaches, especially when drugs impacting the reward pathways are used; revisions in healthcare financing, delivery, and education have increased the representation of nurse practitioners and physician assistants in primary care roles; and the gathering of large interprofessional working groups and creation of interprofessional curricula have endeavored to meet to the above needs. This text is responsive to the guidance of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative which recommends that curricula are based on teamwork, shared values, professional roles, and communication, centered on the patient and family, and informed by community and population. The concepts in this book are firmly rooted in the work of the International Association for the Study of Pain but some adaptations are present. The primary target audience of this book is the primary care provider, or nonpain specialist, seeking quick guidance about pain, within the context of an integrated, whole‐person approach.

This book springs from my passion for teaching and my profound belief in visual learning. My goal is to change how you think, and feel, about pain – to illuminate the reasons behind pain experience, the events of peripheral nociception, the impacts of pain on the person, and the outlines of how manage pain in the most holistic manner possible, with compassion and concern for best long‐term outcomes. With Pain Medicine at a Glance, it is my intention to capture the imagination and attention of each person who happens upon the book, to provide a series of visual mental images that imprint “pain logic” on the mind and aid each reader to approach pain with enthusiasm and interest.

My guiding inspiration for this book was to employ visual learning to change how healthcare providers think about pain. As a young person, I spent many weekends with my grandparents, my grandfather was a naturalist, and my grandmother had grown up on the farm but moved to the city as a teenager to study nursing. They both loved the outdoors but approached it as an opportunity to learn as well as to wonder and enjoy. They had a small collection of guidebooks with exquisite illustrations – trees, mushrooms, wildflowers, seashells, and birds came to life in glorious detail. I loved to gaze at the pictures but was awestruck at how much my grandparents had learned about the world around them and the gentle respect for nature that suffused their approach to exploring that world. Pain Medicine at a Glance is my chance to share the special love and wonder I feel for the human body as a physician and pain scientist. In it, I seek to unlock some fundamental knowledge so that students and colleagues can better understand and respond to this physiological system that functions to protect us, but sometimes causes profound suffering. May this book be a useful guide on your journey to helping others.

Beth B. Hogans

Baltimore, Maryland