The assessment and management of pain in today's healthcare setting continues to be challenging, the main cause of this is thought to be related to a lack of knowledge from health care professionals. Although it is well documented in the literature that lack of pain education is a major contributing cause there continues to be a significant lack of pain education in pre-registration nursing and medical undergraduate programs.
The Essential Pain Management (EPM) programme was developed to address the growing knowledge gaps of professionals in relation to pain in a simple and easy format. Traditional this has been targeted at undergraduate medical students however the aim of this audit was to evaluate its application to nursing and AHP workforce. Participants were asked to complete pre and post course questionnaire as designed by EPM UK to evaluate learning. 
51 participants attended over 4 study days, 42 completed the pre course questionnaire and 46 participants completed the post course questionnaire. Mean score increased from 69.04% to 73.82% following teaching. 80% of participants did not have any formal pain education during undergraduate study and 98% felt that current pain education in the undergraduate setting inadequate. 
EPM teaching resulted in a modest increase in post course test scores which would indicate that it is useful method of improving pain knowledge. However further study is required in a large sample population to ensure its validity.

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ESSENTIAL PAIN MANAGEMENT PROGRAM IN IMPROVING HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS KNOWLEDGE OF PAIN MANAGEMENT