Background: The recent introduction of amendments to the medical licensure laws led to the introduction of the field of pain medicine into the study program "Human Medicine". The implementation has to be completed by all medical faculties before 2016.
Material and methods: Pain medicine was implemented into the model study course"MaReCuM" at the medical faculty in Manheim as a compulsory subject in the year 2010. It is structured into five sections in a longitudinal manner. The core section is the "pain awareness week" in the fifth academic year of the medical studies. The content and structure is based on the German Pain Society (DGSS) curriculum. For the purpose of this study the examination results and the student evaluation forms from the academic years 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 were analyzed.
Results: The students regarded pain medicine as being highly relevant concerning its impact on the professional activities. The competence to develop a specific and individual therapy was of special interest. A good coordination of the contents of teaching between preclinical and clinical teaching was considered to be of major importance.
Conclusions: The DGSS curriculum is a useful tool for the implementation of pain medicine in a study program. In order to improve access to basic pain medicine in general, a combined teaching program consisting of pain medicine and general medicine could be helpful. Pain medicine could be used as a guide for teaching contents of outpatient medicine.