Weekly Lectures
We feel that a strong clinical education must be supported with a well-structured, protected didactic schedule. Once a week from 7:00-8:00 a.m., we will hold a chronic pain fellowship teaching time. This will be an organized lecture series covering topics that are applicable to the fellows’ current rotation. Lecturers will be from multiple specialties including anesthesiology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurology, internal medicine, palliative care, neurosurgery, psychiatry, and others.
Monthly Journal Club
Every month, the UAMS Pain Division will hold a journal club at a local Little Rock venue. Here, we will pick recent topics or articles that are changing the field of chronic pain, interventional pain, and/or neuromodulation, review challenging patient cases, and discuss them with core faculty and other fellowship trained pain physicians in private practice throughout the state. This will not only give the fellows an opportunity to discuss current literature and new innovations, but also to learn how these new discoveries affect both academic practices and private practices.
Distinguished Lecture Series in Pain
With a generous grant from the Arkansas Pain Management Society, we invite a guest lecturer three times per year. These physicians will spend time exclusively with our fellows to discuss their practice expertise. The day will culminate with a lecture for the entire UAMS campus and dinner with the speaker. Past speakers include Dr. Amit Gulati, Director of Chronic Pain at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. Roland Short, Director of Opioid Stewardship at University of Alabama Birmingham.
Cadaver Lab Time
Due to a generous grant by the Jack T. Stephens Spine Institute, UAMS pain fellows will have unlimited use of the sixth floor cadaver lab at the Institute, which is located just five floors above our home clinic space. If fellows feel that they need extra time to improve their skills, cadaver labs can be scheduled within a week’s notice.
Pain Medicine Boot Camps
We also hold formal bi-annual boot camps on a Saturday for both residents and fellows in our Jack T. Stephens Spine Institute Cadaver Lab. In the fall, we focus on radiofrequency ablation of the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical spine and kyphoplasty/vertebroplasty. In the spring, we focus on dorsal column stimulation and dorsal root ganglion stimulation.
Arkansas Pain Management Symposium
Every July we culminate the fellow year with a statewide symposium. Annual attendance usually tops over 200 physicians and health care professionals and we provide updates to the state on hot topics in chronic pain. Past speakers include Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas Drug Director Kirk Lane, and Deputy Director of Marijuana Policy for the City of San Francisco Eugene Hillsman.
Research
In the UAMS Chronic Pain Division, we feel that advancing the fields of interventional pain management and neuromodulation are of utmost importance. All of our fellows will participate or lead a clinical research trial during their fellowship. Fellows will present their research at least one national meeting and attend workshops and other training and networking courses throughout the year. Opportunities include the American Society of Anesthesiology, North American Neuromodulation Society Meeting, American Society of Regional Anesthesiology Meeting, and others. Fellows will also be encouraged to produce a manuscript and seek publication of their work.
Financial/Career Wellness Series
This series, created by Dr. Johnathan Goree, Chronic Pain Division Director, is a series that will provide our learners with skills such as the business of medicine, financial planning, how to protect your assets, how to structure a lecture, how to leverage society relationships, and how to navigate industry relationships in medicine. Our learners will have the opportunity to hear from a financial CEO, an Estate Planning Attorney, and other faculty in sub-specialties such as Surgery Trauma, Neurosurgery, and Anesthesiology. The series is scheduled annually every spring.
Pain Medicine Morbidity and Mortality
The Pain Medicine M&M is a monthly conference led by Associate Professor, Dr. G Lawson Smith, the program’s inaugural fellow and Assistant Professor Dr. Christopher Maranto, UAMS Anesthesiology Alumni, that presents complicated cases experienced in the pain clinic to identify areas for improvement, to promote professionalism, ethical integrity and transparency in assessing and improving patient care.