Pain Management in Small Animal Practice

The first week of the pain management course will look at how the sensation of pain arises, what pain does to our patient, and how our patients respond to pain. In addition, we will learn how to recognize pain, and how to more accurately assess and monitor pain using various pain scoring systems.

In the second week of the course, we will look at how the different analgesics work, and how we can use them to optimum benefit for our patients. We’ll also look at how to monitor the use and effectiveness of our analgesics, our legal obligations, and, importantly, how to manage toxicity due to analgesics! It’s an exciting week – as we’ll also cover a range of anaesthetic techniques, including intravenous analgesic infusions, epidurals, local anesthesia blocks, and management of chronic pain as well!

The final week of the pain management course covers analgesic techniques in specific diseases in both dogs and cats, including pregnancy, cesarean section, analgesia for geriatric and paediatric patients, chronic pain patients and much more!