Teaching patients about pain: the emergence of Pain Science Education, its learning frameworks and delivery strategies

Since it emerged in the early 2000’s, intensive education about ‘how pain works’, widely known as pain neuroscience education or explaining pain, has evolved into a new educational approach, with new content and new strategies. The substantial differences to the original have led the PETAL collaboration to call the current iteration ‘Pain Science Education’. This review presents a brief historical context for PSE, the clinical trial, consumer perspective and real-world clinical data that have pushed the field to update both content and method. We describe the key role of educational psychology in driving this change, the central role of constructivism and the constructivist learning frameworks around which PSE is now planned and delivered. We integrate terminology and concepts from the learning frameworks currently being used across the PETAL collaboration in both research and practice – the Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive (ICAP) framework, transformative learning theory, dynamic model of conceptual change. We then discuss strategies that are being used to enhance learning within clinical encounters, which focus on the skill, will and thrill of learning. Finally, we provide practical examples of these strategies so as to assist the reader to drive their own patient pain education offerings towards more effective learning