Multidisciplinary Pain Management: Evidence-Based Update

Course overview

Pain is one of the most common and disabling conditions seen in adult and older adult populations around the world. It affects physical ability, emotional health, social life, and how often people use healthcare services. In the United States alone, chronic pain affects roughly 50 million adults. Of those, about 20 million have high-impact chronic pain meaning it significantly limits their ability to carry out daily activities. The financial costs are enormous, including both the direct costs of medical care and the indirect losses from reduced work productivity. These costs continue to climb as the population ages and more people live with multiple health conditions at once. In response, clinical evidence now supports a major shift in practice: moving away from treatments centered on opioid medications and toward comprehensive, team-based strategies that combine validated assessment, non-opioid medications, physical rehabilitation, psychological support, and newer technologies. This course is designed for the rehabilitation and healthcare professionals who work directly with patients in pain: physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses, and allied health clinicians. It addresses the clinical reality that effective pain management today requires much more than skill with a single treatment. It requires the ability to assess pain accurately across diverse patient groups, understand the basic science of how pain becomes chronic, choose evidence-based treatments that fit each patient's needs, and work effectively within a team. Older adults receive special attention throughout this course because they face unique challenges including cognitive impairment, multiple medications, fall risk, and changes in how their bodies process drugs. The content is organized into seven evidence-based modules that build on each other. The course begins with the biological mechanisms of acute and chronic pain, establishing why multimodal treatment makes sense. It then covers comprehensive pain assessment strategies adapted for patients with different cognitive abilities and in different clinical settings; non-opioid medications with close attention to safety in older adults; physical therapy and exercise treatments with condition-specific protocols; psychological treatments and the evidence for combining physical and psychological approaches; emerging treatments including neuromodulation and digital health programs; and finally, the practical steps for bringing all of these components together in a team-based workflow with validated outcome tracking. A clinical case study module applies these concepts to realistic patient scenarios. All content reflects the most current evidence available, with the large majority of references published between 2022 and 2025, drawn from major clinical practice guidelines, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and randomized controlled trials. This course gives clinicians the knowledge and clinical reasoning skills needed to deliver safe, effective, and patient-centered pain management.