Pain Medicine Fellowship

The Rush University Medical Center Department of Anesthesiology is home to one of the country’s largest pain centers, providing subacute and chronic pain management services to more than 10,000 patients annually in both preoperative and non-operative settings. Guided and trained by a distinguished faculty of board-certified anesthesiologists, you’ll be well prepared for a highly specialized clinical practice in private practice, university or community settings.

Program faculty have extensive experience in a wide range of pain disorders including:

• Cancer pain
• Chronic pain syndrome
• Complex regional pain syndrome
• Neck pain
• Diabetic neuropathy
• Failed back syndrome
• Post-operative pain
• Sports injuries
• Neuropathic pain
• Headache

During the Rush University Pain Medicine Fellowship, fellows will collaborate closely with attending physicians across diverse settings, including Rush University Medical Center, Rush Oak Park Hospital, the Rush Surgicenter, Rush Oak Brook Surgicenter, Rush clinic, and affiliated satellite clinics. This comprehensive experience will provide them with a strong foundation in pain management principles. Fellows will be exposed to cases of varying complexity for patients of all ages and develop proficiency in a wide range of procedures, such as regional nerve blocks, intrathecal drug pump placements, and the implantation of epidural electrodes and pulse generators for spinal cord stimulation.

Some specific areas of training include the following:

• The anatomy and physiology of pain perception
• Pharmacology of opiates, non-narcotic analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications and centrally-acting pain medicine drugs
• Principles of acute and cancer pain medicine, neurostimulation, diagnostic testing and others
• Use of regional nerve blocks and neurolytic techniques
• Multidisciplinary team management of chronic pain, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, and rehabilitation as well as cognitive, behavioral and supportive psychotherapy
• Organization and management of a pain medicine center, including continuing quality improvement, utilization review and program evaluation
• Extensive experience in all aspects of neuromodulation including, spinal cord stimulation, dorsal root ganglion stimulation, peripheral nerve stimulation and intrathecal drug delivery, and indirect lumbar decompression techniques.
• Several day long cadaver training programs learning neuromodulation techniques at Rush during the early portion of each academic year. 

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