About Pain Management Today

Objectives

Pain Management Today is an annual, independent, peer reviewed journal on pain management written and refereed by doctors for Australian GPs, specialists and other health professionals. Its content is clinically focused, practical, evidence-based and well illustrated, designed to meet the needs of busy doctors.

Its aim is to provide doctors with practical reviews and clinical information that will assist them in reviewing and updating their knowledge in the field of pain management. The content is focused primarily on the needs of GPs.

Pain Management Today is subjected to the same thorough peer review process and high production standards applied to our flagship journal Medicine Today.

What is Pain Management Today about?

GPs are usually the first medical contact for patients with pain, a frequently occurring and often distressing symptom of many conditions. Patients may present with acute pain, as in an acute abdomen or following a fracture, or with chronic pain such as that caused by arthritis. Pain can be persistent and demoralising, such as low back pain, or frightening and severely disabling, such as cancer pain.

Recent surveys have shown that up to 20% of the Australian population had pain lasting longer than three months in the past year. So pain is common. It is also one of Australia’s most costly healthcare problems.

Pain Management Today offers a wide variety of reader-friendly articles, including features, perspectives, practical guides to pain assessment and to the management of acute pain presentations in general practice, and clinical case studies with commentary by different specialists.

We hope that Pain Management Today will be helpful in your busy practices. We welcome feedback on its value and also suggestions for topics in future issues. 

Frequency

Pain Management Today is published once a year. It is published in print in a dedicated section within Medicine Today and online at painmanagementtoday.com.au.

Editorial independence

The editorial independence and high clinical standards held by Pain Management Today are of paramount importance to the publishers and are guarded rigorously. The entire content is subjected to a peer review process of the quality usually reserved for scientific (rather than review) publications.

To ensure Pain Management Today’s editorial content is totally independent, credible and accurate:

• the Editorial Advisory Board monitors the clinical standards and content of the journal
• members of the Editorial Advisory Board and senior consultants provide author recommendations
• all submitted articles undergo our thorough peer review process
• all authors are required to disclose any commercial or financial association that might be seen to be a conflict of interest, using the standard disclosure form of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest), and these disclosures are published at the end of each article
• articles that have any known input from pharmaceutical companies, public relations firms or other commercial entities are not accepted.

How we source content

Pain Management Today’s editorial content is focused on pain medicine, aimed primarily at the GP readership. Most of the content is commissioned in house after consultation with members of the Editorial Advisory Board and senior consultants. The authors of our articles are highly experienced, senior clinicians who are well recognised in their field of medicine.

The opinions expressed in the editorial content are those of the commissioned authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Editors, the Editorial Advisory Board or the publishers.

Peer review process

Based on the successful Medicine Today formula, every article published in Pain Management Today has undergone our rigorous single-blind peer review process to ensure the content is accurate, credible, up to date and independent. At least two specialists in the relevant field of medicine and one GP review each article before it is accepted for publication.

Reviewers provide instructive comments, suggestions and recommendations on the suitability for publication of each article. All feedback is sent to the authors, who may be required to revise the text or respond to specific comments before their article is accepted for publication.

The Editorial Advisory Board

Pain Management Today’s Editorial Advisory Board has a vital role in maintaining the journal’s high editorial standards. Led by Chair and Editor in Chief Associate Professor Charles Brooker, the Board has a major and active role in reviewing articles and providing suggestions for reviewers, authors and content. Its members can be viewed here. The Board also meets formally three times a year to discuss editorial and publishing issues.

Editorial content

Pain Management Today’s peer reviewed content covers a range of article types, including the following:

Features – In-depth reviews of practical clinical information on acute and chronic pain, covering the diagnosis, investigation and/or management of a particular condition.

Perspectives – Shorter pithy articles on specific pain management issues.

Case Studies – Discussions of the management of cases typically presenting in general practice.

Acute Pain Presentations – Case-based articles on the general practice presentations of patients with acute pain.

Pain Assessment – Articles focusing on the assessment of pain (using different pain tools), structured using case scenarios with a question and answer approach.

Journal Watch – Brief summaries of research articles published in major international medical journals, produced by the NEJM Group, a division of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

Letters

We would like to hear your opinions, suggestions and feedback. If you find a particular article helpful in your practice or have something to say about an article we have published, then submit a letter and we will consider it for publication. We are more likely to print short letters (no longer than 250 words), so please be succinct. You can post your letter to us (Medicine Today Pty Ltd, PO Box 1473, Neutral Bay NSW 2089, Australia) or submit your letter by completing the Contact Us form.