September is Pain Awareness Month, giving the medical community and the public the opportunity to reflect on the needs of the millions of people with chronic pain, as well as the research being done to better prevent and treat it.

Understanding Pharmacology CME & The Scope of Chronic Pain in America

According to research from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), chronic pain is highly persistent, with almost two-thirds (61.4%) of those who reported chronic pain in 2019 still reporting chronic pain a year later. The U.S. Pain Foundation reports that 51.6 million Americans live with chronic pain – when it persists for six months or more. But for some patients, chronic pain can last for years or even a lifetime, with a variety of causes, such as injury, involvement in a car accident, or underlying disorders or diseases, like fibromyalgia or arthritis. No matter the cause, there are more new cases of chronic pain in the U.S. per year than new cases of hypertension, depression or diabetes.

Adding to the challenge of pain management, the U.S. Pain Foundation says, is the fact that “because each individual person with pain is so unique, it can be challenging to manage pain effectively. No single approach fits every patient, and providers aim to reduce pain rather than eliminate it. Working alongside health care providers, most people with pain will need to engage in a process of trial and error to find a treatment plan that works for them.”

How Pharmacology CME Helps Providers Improve Pain Care

At Skin, Bones, Hearts & Private Parts, we have joined the effort to better understand and treat pain, as we dedicate portions of our full-day, single-topic CME to related pharmacology. The NIH Library of Medicine shows that students often perceive pharmacology as hard to learn, which is why active learning strategies are key. With that in mind, we’ve made pharmacology CME an integral part of our In-person CME Conferences and offer two dedicated On-demand courses on pain management to meet every time crunch and budget! 

Worth 6.75 CME Credit Hours (Rx=1.25), the 2024 session is taught by Jeremy Adler, DMSc, PA-C, DFAAPA, and includes:

• Chronic pain conditions – a deeper dive into the usual suspects
• Pain pathophysiology 
• Aberrant behaviors & patient monitoring
• Innovations in interventional pain management.

The 2025 session is taught by Heather Naylor, PhD, FNP-BC, AP-PMN, FAIPM, and includes:

• Can cannabis and opioids play nice in pain management?
• Acute pain management in ambulatory adults and marginalized populations
• Pain management playbook
• The power of suggestion.

Our Best of the Best of 2025 includes sessions on pain management, with Dr. Naylor’s focus on cannabis and opioids, as well as hypnosis, featured.

Encore Virtual CME: Flexible Options for Busy Providers

Finally, starting on the first Monday of the month beginning in December 2025, we will make available four days of content from one of our top 2025 conferences through our new Encore Virtual CME program. Get full access to the recorded sessions, watch when it works for you, and earn valuable CME credits along the way – including pharmacology CME! 

If in-person CME is your jam, we still have three more conferences this year! Join us at: 

• October 7-10, 2025: Austin, TX (Earn up to 26 CME credits and 5.25 APRN Pharmacology credits)
• October 20-23, 2025: Orlando, FL (Earn up to 39 CME credits and 9.75 APRN Pharmacology credits)
• November 11-14, 2025: Las Vegas, NV (Earn up to 39 CME credits and 10.5 APRN Pharmacology credits).

Earn CME Credits While Expanding Your Pain Management Knowledge

Whether you take in an in-person CME Conference at a destination location, or via our on-demand courses, like our Best of the Best of 2025; or virtual CME conferences, such as our Encore Virtual CME event series, you’ll learn from the best of the medical community as you earn CME credits, network, and gain knowledge on cardiology and emergency medicine, dermatology, diabetes, orthopedics, pain management, pharmacology & prescribing and women’s health. We also offer the best value per CME credit in the CME training industry!