Course Details

Course offered Spring 2018

HONORS 222 B: Pain (NSc)

HONORS 222 B: Pain (NSc)

SLN 14940 (View UW registration info »)

John Loeser (Neurological Surgery; Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine)
Phone: 206-499-1408
Email: jdloeser@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students

Honors Credit Type

Pain presents a challenge as a problem in science, as a problem in health policy and patient treatment, and as a problem in understanding deeper human experiences. Pain is a universal experience. While all of us have experienced acute pain following surgery or an injury, not all of us have experienced chronic pain, which is pain that persists after tissue healing has occurred, usually > 3 months after injury. In this seminar course, we will explore pain from multiple perspectives. Some of these include the physiology, pathophysiology and psychology of pain, the epidemiology of and risk factors for pain, the subjective experience of pain. Readings, short lectures, and student discussions will address the “sciences” of pain, the expression of pain in literature, philosophic analyses of pain, and social science/anthropologic aspects of pain and its roles in different cultures.

Students will be evaluated on the basis of a term paper on a topic of interest to the student (after discussion with one of the instructors), weekly “thought” pieces based upon the week’s reading, and class participation. We will use a “flipped classroom” model and expect the students do do most of the talking during our sessions.

We encourage students from any discipline to enroll in the course. It is specifically designed to incorporate multidisciplinary perspectives, and presupposes only a general education and inquisitiveness.