3 Reasons Con Ed is Failing Us in Pain Care Education

Hey, everybody. Welcome back for another episode of the Modern Pain Podcast. This week, I wanted to change it up a little bit. I wanted to talk a little bit of why I think continuing education is really failing to deliver significant change in practice. Now, some people are gonna get mad at me and I want to just pump the brakes a little bit. I am not saying that weekend courses aren't, can't be helpful. I've learned some things from them, but I want to talk today about why three reasons why I think continued education is failing to make a significant impact on pain. This is the Modern Pain Podcast with Mark Kargela. First and foremost, I think the biggest issue is the Con Ed course environment looks zero like your clinical practice. I will give it some caveats though. There are some courses. That actually have real patients come in and it becomes this not let's just not talk about it. Let's do it I have valued those type of courses so much more than the let's just treat our fellow Clinicians and pat each other on the back that we're doing well again, not bad. It's good to learn technical skills and things like that But that's not what you see on Monday. That's not what you see when you stare down some difficult conversations. That's not what you see when you have patients who have some challenging pain presentations look you in the eyes, and you gotta figure out what to do. And you know what that doesn't look like? The clinician you were just practicing on all weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Again, not bad, just very limited. And I think having situations and having the ability to see mentors treat real patients or talk about their cases Has been huge for me just to see their thinking process. How are you applying act in this situation? How are you doing motivational interviewing? What do your discussions look like? How are you facing some of these difficult conversations with patients? You can have some of those discussions on Saturday and Sunday, but. Man, I'll tell you what, some of the best times and best value I've ever gotten in kentucky education was when I was getting mentored when it wasn't. I had to just pack it all into a Saturday and Sunday. It was real time within my practice. If I wanted to reach out to my mentor, I could text, I could email. Um, and I could get, you know, feedback on this is what I struggled with today in practice. What would you have done in this situation? This is where I faced this conversation, man. I felt like I fell flat. I felt like it went terrible, felt like the patient left worse than when they came in. We've all felt that. We've all been there. So what do we do to help that? We'll talk about it. And if you stick around to the end today, we're going to talk about some opportunities. and something that I'm creating that hopefully is going to deal with some of the issues we're having in continue education and give you a community that you can really grow and thrive in as a clinician instead of the Saturday, Sunday stuff that kind of can be a struggle for us. The other thing that happens is we find ourselves on islands in clinical practice and continued education kind of puts us on an island on Saturday and Sunday. But then again, we sometimes take this continued education and we're the only one in our practice who's trying to apply this stuff or we're the only one that's really bought into current science and modern pain. So that's again, it's not to say other clinicians are bad. It's just People are different parts of their lives, people have different motivations and their practices where this modern pain science and modern approach, motivation, interviewing, acceptance, commitment, therapy may not be where they're at in their journey right now. Now, hopefully we can have impacts and influence some of our fellow clinicians to see the benefits of it, not by lecturing them, but by showing them how, when we interact this way with our patients, man, we can make some significant changes in our patients. But with that said, and you're on this island, well, what do you lean on? when you're, when you don't have, you know, a colleague, a mentor with you, um, to, to bounce ideas off. I've talked with clinicians regularly who tell me, and I'm the only one who's practicing this way. I just feel like I got nobody to talk to. I have no mentors and things like that. So there's a huge hole in the continuing education landscape that just doesn't fit. There's, we, it doesn't take people off islands. It just, you get off of your island and go on Saturday and Sunday, but then. Monday through Friday, your Island is the same. You're, you're back struggling around folks that aren't in the same mindset you are, that don't want to take patients in the same direction you do. So how do you improve and grow in those situations? I've found the ability to talk to peers in situations where For instance, haven't been there in a year or two, but San Diego pain summit, one of the most, the best discussions I'd say the, the lectures are amazing. Don't get me wrong. They have some amazing speakers and experts that come in and do some great talks, but I've actually had probably the most value with the discussions that happen around these, the, the lunchtime discussions with. with fellow clinicians and researchers and occupational therapists, massage therapists, PTs, physicians, all the amazing folks that attend some of these conferences and just kind of bouncing ideas off each other. What did, what would you've done in this situation when you're seeing this? What, what's your kind of approach? What do you do? I mean, to me, that's the best learning that I've ever had. In clinical practice. So that ability to have peer support to me is invaluable and something that I can't stress enough is something that I would look for if I'm a clinician. How do I get around like minded people that can help me grow in the direction I want to grow as a clinician? Um, because sitting on that island just doesn't do it for us. Um, the other thing I would say, why continue education? The other thing I would say, why continue education just doesn't deliver the goods when it comes to pain care? It disrupts our lives as people, like we can't always just pick up and travel and, and, and spend the money for hotels and registrations. We all have differing Con Ed budgets. Some of us have no Con Ed budgets. It's all on us. Um, so it's just a, it's a significant undertaking financially. To be able to jump into these courses and make the travels and do these things, not just an inconvenience financially, but also an inconvenience, um, just from a lifestyle standpoint. I mean, great. It's good to travel, but if you have family, but even if you don't have family, I mean, it's, it's not easy to make these trips and do these different things. So. It's disrupted to our life and I think having learning that just kind of is melded into your life. I mean, I think we all have some of it where, yeah, we probably read research and do our own kind of educating of ourselves within our own kind of day to day existence at home and in the clinic. But man, what if we had some more of a powerful learning environment that we could have in our pocket? Uh, on our phone and different things. Now, there's some things out there, Facebook groups and, and different things, social media, which I've often struggled with just because it oftentimes gets, you know, bombard with advertising and, and all kinds of other things that kind of take us away from the, a very focused, you know, environment where we're, we're really trying to learn and grow us as clinicians or as whatever it is that we're learning about. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit, all is hopefully if any of this resonates with you, I want you to kind of listen and I want feedback. I want you to tell me and you can definitely, you know, respond on social media, reach out to me at mark at modern pain care dot com. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this, but here's what I'm looking at. Here's what I'm creating. So I'm looking at creating a learning community and peer support community. Couple reasons. It's mainly to get away from this. Con Ed, Saturday, Sunday, false environment that doesn't exist in our clinics and teach you in the most important classroom in the classroom that absolutely matters the most and that is the clinic. That's where you face these discussions. That's where you work with the patients that are struggling with pain. So let's get an environment where you can learn in those situations. So that's, that's one of my motivations with this. The other thing is we want you to have a peer support community. Again, I've spoke to how valuable that's been for me in my past. Why can't we create a community where you have experts of all walks, early year clinicians, new grads, we may even have some students, we might even have some seasoned clinicians, all pushing each other to grow and learn more, leaning on each other's expertise and life experiences, um, to, to help us all grow together. So that's. One of the motivations behind it. And as I mentioned earlier, let's not disrupt people's life significantly. Let's have you the ability to learn consistently, constantly, where you can open up an app on your phone, see some live meetings, see, you know, the ability to have workshops, have the ability to, you know, after your, your encounter, let me jump on my phone. This is what I felt. Oh, let me record a quick video and talk to my community about what I just saw. And what are their suggestions to help me move forward? Um, to me, that's, that's learning that is just invaluable and something that you can't. Get on a Saturday and Sunday course. So with that said, I'm creating the modern pain pro community. It's going to be a community that initially is going to be built by the folks who get into it early on. So I'm going to be enrolling about 15 to 20 clinicians and we're going to have them. I don't want to build out a bunch of stuff that clinicians go into and like, I don't need that. I don't want that. That's not something that really interests me. We're going to have a framework and some ability and we're going to have some, I can't say names. I can't name drop yet. I'm excited because we have some folks that are going to help me in this community. Some experts that I think you're going to know, um, that are going to really be able to help coach and guide you in some of your struggles. But before we build out a bunch of infrastructure and things in the community that we're not sure you're all going to like or not like, we're going to get you in the community the first 15 to 20, and we're going to really give you one of significantly discounted rate, um, because as much as I'd love to do this for free, um, to be able to get programmed, to get experts, to have live workshops, to, to have experts come in and do all the things, um, you know, we need to, to, to charge money so we can make that happen and grow it and make it a sustainable business that has the impact. We want to have across pain care. So it will be a paid community. The initial cohort, of course, is going to have a significant discount, um, in exchange for your help, your help to help me grow it, to build it, to determine what's going to be the things that are going to be helpful for you to best improve your own practices, to best meet you where you're at, and the best make sure you're checking off your goals as it relates to improving your clinical practice. If that is of interest of you, if this sounds like something you think would be a good fit for you, We'd love to have a discussion, we'd love to have you in the community and maybe be part of that 15 to 20 clinicians who come in early on. That will be, um, something you can go to modernpaincare. com forward slash community and that'll give you the opportunity to jump into the community. Um, we'll, I'll, I'll be reaching out to folks who get on the wait list and, and getting enrolled. Hopefully this is something, and again, I'm excited. I can't wait to get this community rolling. I think it's something that truly has the ability to be education that is focused. to a group of people with common goals, with common struggles, that's going to help us really move the needle forward. And I just see a lot of opportunities to have some very cool options to not just be for, this isn't just for physiotherapists, could be for chiropractors, could be for possibly massage therapists, could be for occupational therapists. We all deal with pain. So let's produce a community that can make a significant change and the more we grow, the more opportunity we have to make a significant impact. So with that said, I'm going to leave it at that this week. Again, don't forget to go to modernpaincare. com forward slash community and jump on our wait list. We'd love to have you in the community and be part of the group that's going to really chart the course of what we grow and develop moving forward. Until next time, we'll talk to you next week. This has been another episode of the Modern Pain Podcast with Dr. Mark Cartula. Join us next time as we continue our journey to help change the story around pain. For more information on the show, visit modernpaincare. com. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Please consult a licensed professional for your specific medical needs. Changing the story around pain. This is the Modern Pain Podcast.