Course Details

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. Some chronic pains appear to have no antecedent acute pain. In this seminar course, we will explore pain from multiple perspectives. Some of these include the physiology, pathophysiology, psychology and sociology of pain, the role of opioids and other medications in the treatment of pain, the epidemiology of and risk factors for pain and disability, and the subjective experience of pain. Readings, short lectures, and discussions will address the “sciences” of pain, health care for pain, the expression of pain in literature, philosophical aspects of pain, and social science/anthropologic analyses of pain and its role in different cultures. This is distinctly not a medical school course.