Curtin is a founding partner in the launch of a new national collaboration to transform how healthcare professionals understand and care for people living with chronic pain.

OPEN – The Online Pain Education Network is a social enterprise delivering 20 hours of evidence-based online pain management training to strengthen the current and emerging healthcare workforce to support person-centred pain care.

Funded by the Australian Department of Health, Aged Care and Disability, with philanthropic co-funding from TDM Partners and Hearts and Minds Investments, this initiative provides an exciting opportunity for training and qualified healthcare professionals, pain consumers, researchers and institutions to work together to transform how people living with pain are understood and supported in their pain care.

The OPEN Clinical Pain Training is grounded in the extensive research of teams from USydney led by Professor Michael Nicholas and Curtin University including Professor Helen Slater, Professor Andrew Briggs, Professor Peter O’Sullivan and Dr Rob Schütze, along with Dr Roger Goucke, Pain Medicine Specialist. The Curtin team led the co-development of the framework ‘Listen to me, learn from me,’ which places the voice of people living with pain at the centre of the training program.

The research team also acknowledges the critical support from Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Professor Melinda Fitzgerald, Faculty of Health Sciences Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Carlo Marra, Curtin School of Allied Health Head of School Professor Courtenay Harris, Dr Tom Hammond from the Commercialisation team and Senior Legal Counsel James Harris.

The OPEN program will be scaled nationally and globally in the future, helping to drive lasting change in pain education and person-centred pain care. Visit the website for more information.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this groundbreaking initiative!