What are the care-seeking priorities of people living with chronic pain and carers and how can these shape interdisciplinary workforce training to improve high-value pain care? Phase 1: Australian people living with chronic pain (n = 206; 90% female) and carers (n = 10; 40% female) described their pain care priorities (eDelphi, round 1). A coding framework was inductively derived from 842 pain care priorities (9 categories, 52 priorities), including validation; communication; multidisciplinary approaches; holistic care; partnerships; practitioner knowledge; self-management; medicines; and diagnosis. Phase 2: In eDelphi round 2, panellists (n = 170; valid responses) rated the importance (1 = less important; 9 = more important) of the represented framework. In parallel, cross-discipline health professionals (n = 267; 75% female) rated the importance of these same priorities. Applying the RAND-UCLA method (panel medians: 1-3: “not important,” 4-6: “equivocal,” or 7-9: “important”), “important” items were retained where the panel median score was >7 with panel agreement ≥70%, with 44 items (84.6%) retained. Specific workforce training targets included the following: empathic validation; effective, respectful, safe communication; and ensuring genuine partnerships in coplanning personalised care. Panellists and health professionals agreed or strongly agreed (95.7% and 95.2%, respectively) that this framework meaningfully reflected the importance in care seeking for pain. More than 74% of health professionals were fairly or extremely confident in their ability to support care priorities for 6 of 9 categories (66.7%). Phase 3: An interdisciplinary panel (n = 5) mapped an existing foundation-level workforce training program against the framework, identifying gaps and training targets. Recommendations were determined for framework adoption to genuinely shape, from a partnership perspective, Australian interdisciplinary pain training.

Approximately 80% of the world’s population lives in countries with little or no access to pain management. These countries also have 74% of the world’s deaths from cancer and human immunodeficiency virus. Appropriate use of oral opioids can control 80%–90% of cancer pain. However, only 6.7% of the world’s medical opioids are available in these low-resource countries. With the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery calling for a significant expansion of surgical services, postoperative pain management will need to be an increasing focus of our attention. There are multiple barriers to providing effective pain management. These include the type and funding of the health care system, the size and educational level of the workforce, the ease of access to effective medications, and the expectations and knowledge base of the community. Some barriers can be addressed by education at the undergraduate level, postgraduate level, and community level. Others will require continued advocacy at government level. Only when we tackle these problems will the considerable neglect of access to effective pain treatment in low- and middle-income countries be lessened.

Persistent pain is a complex mix of physical and psychological symptoms and is ideally managed by a biopsychosocial approach. Often the relative contributions of family and personal relationships, f...