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Current status of pain medicine training in anesthesiology and pain medicine residency programs in university hospitals of Korea: a survey of residents’ opinions
  1. Jin Young Lee1,
  2. Shin Hyung Kim2,
  3. Yongjae Yoo3,
  4. Seong Soo Choi4,
  5. Sang Hun Kim5,
  6. Yoo Jung Park6,
  7. Gyeong Jo Byeon7,
  8. Yeon Dong Kim8,
  9. Jung Eun Kim9,
  10. Se Hee Kang1,
  11. Jia Kim10,
  12. Min Ju Kim10 and
  13. Hue Jung Park10
  1. 1 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University, School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  2. 2 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  3. 3 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  4. 4 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  5. 5 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Chosun University Hospital, School of Medicine, Chosun University, Gwangju, Republic of Korea
  6. 6 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Saint Vincent’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Suwon, Republic of Korea
  7. 7 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, School of Medicine, Pusan National University, Yangsan, Republic of Korea
  8. 8 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Wonkwang University Hospital, Wonkwang School of Medicine, Iksan, Republic of Korea
  9. 9 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, Hallym University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  10. 10 Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul St Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  1. Correspondence to Dr Hue Jung Park, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, the Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea; huejung{at}catholic.ac.kr

Abstract

Background In Korea, anesthesiologists are expected to be mainstream pain medicine (PM) practitioners. However, anesthesiology and pain medicine (APM) residency programs mostly emphasize anesthesia learning, leading to insufficient PM learning. Therefore, this study evaluated the current status of PM training in APM residency programs in 10 Korean university hospitals.

Methods Overall, 156 residents undergoing APM training participated anonymously in our survey, focusing on PM training. We assessed the aim, satisfaction status, duration, opinion on duration, desired duration, weaknesses of the training programs and plans of residents after graduating. We divided the residents into junior (first and second year) and senior (third and fourth year). Survey data were compared between groups.

Results Senior showed significantly different level of satisfaction grade than did junior (p=0.026). Fifty-seven (81.4%) residents in junior and forty (46.5%) residents in senior underwent PM training for ≤2 months. Most (108; 69.2%) residents felt that the training period was too short for PM learning and 95 (60.9%) residents desired a training period of ≥6 months. The most commonly expressed weakness of the training was low interventional opportunity (29.7%), followed by short duration (26.6%). After residency, 80 (49.1%) residents planned to pursue a fellowship.

Conclusions Dissatisfaction with PM training was probably due to a structural tendency of the current program towards anesthesia training and insufficient clinical experience, which needs to be rectified, with a change in PM curriculum.

  • resident education
  • pain medicine
  • clinical pain

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Footnotes

  • Correction notice This article has been corrected since it published Online First. The affiliation details for Jia Kim and Min Ju Kim have been corrected.

  • Contributors JYL and HJP: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, writing, review and editing; ShHK, YY, SSC, SaHK, YJP, GJB, YDK, JEK, SeHK, JK, MJK: data curation and investigation.

  • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent for publication Not required.

  • Ethics approval This study was approved by our departmental ethics committee (ref: SMC 2019-08-136) and registered with Clinical Research Information Service of the Korea National Institute of Health, ref: KCT0004274 (http://cris.nih.go.kr/cris/index.jsp).

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

  • Data availability statement No data are available.