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
Six months out of the year at 5:00 p.m., the UAMS Pain Division, in a joint venture with the Arkansas Chronic Pain Management Society, 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 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 trail during their fellowship. Fellows will present their research at at least one national meeting. Options include the American Society of Anesthesiology, North American Neuromodulation Society Meeting, American Society of Regional Anesthesiology Meeting, or others. Fellows will also be encouraged to produce a manuscript and seek publication of their work.
Financial/Career Wellness Series
This series, created by Johnathan Goree, M.D., Fellowship 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, ASRA’s 2020 Fellow of the Year Award Winner, and other faculty in sub-specialties such as Surgery Trauma, Neurosurgery, and Anesthesiology. The series is scheduled from February – March 2022.
Download the series flyer (PDF).