Welcome to 4PCP

Our faculty have collaborated on chronic pain and addiction since 1994. They are widely published and have taught seminars and workshops nationally and internationally. Beyond teaching you content and information, they focus on the foundational aspects of patient care, and patient-doctor communication, the real how-to’s of a medical practice.

Our Faculty

WHY 4PCP?

  • Gap: Chronic pain education ranges from zero to six hours in most medical schools and is biased towards a biopharmacologic approach. The opioid crisis is an unintended consequence of this rote reliance on drugs. The biopharmacologic model manages the pain signal with drugs but does not address the deeper factors that sustain the chronic pain syndrome.

  • Answer: psychologists learn the biobehavioral model, foreign to most medical practitioners. This lens views a chronic pain syndrome as a brain disorder, reinforced by years of counter-productive cognitive, emotional and behavioral habits, requiring long-term retraining of brain circuits.

  • 4PCP trains practitioners to use this paradigm as a valuable and beneficial tool for patient care. Team-based biobehavioral treatment is recognized as a best-practice in treating chronic pain, so 4PCP trains not just the medical practitioner, but an entire team, including a local behavioral specialist and a physical therapist.

  • Results: A published 4PCP 2013 pilot showed that physicians easily implemented the new biobehavioral framework. Their pain practice satisfaction rose, visit times shortened, patient outcomes improved, and they prescribed fewer opioids.

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How does 4PCP work?

It’s been said that knowledge without wisdom is dangerous, and wisdom without knowledge is useless. 4PCP “rethinks” pain. 4PCP gives you the knowledge while enabling you to make wise clinical decisions. 4PCP teaches the bio-behavioral paradigm as a foreign language, using lots of practice and repetition in the situated learning style of residency. CME or CEU are provided, as well as a chronic pain competency certificate. You may also elect performance improvement CME and MOC. 4PCP has three parts:

  • Web-based pre-training preparation (6 hours in 1 month), with short videos, journaling & preparation.

  • Intensive 2-day hands-on training workshop (16 hours) with 4PCP faculty to practice new concepts and matching phrases with your colleagues and build the chronic pain team with the behaviorist and PT – you leave this session with your team ready to go!

  • Critical post-workshop learning consolidation (6 hours over 3 months) practicing what you learned on your own live patients in your practice; you will journal these experiences on the 4PCP website, shared with 4PCP faculty and colleagues around the country in similar learning phases. You will also participate in a monthly case presentation by phone or video.

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