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About

The painTRAINER program is an interactive, online tool that teaches you effective strategies to manage your pain. The painTRAINER program is made up of 8 sessions, each lasting about 30-45 minutes. It is recommended that you complete one session per week.

In the sessions, you’ll learn about how using pain coping skills changes the way you react to pain. Then you’ll learn a variety of pain coping skills and how to use them in your everyday life. Practicing the skills is an important part of the program. The painTRAINER program uses techniques that have been tested in scientific research.

No, there is no charge for you to access the painTRAINER program.

Research has shown that painTRAINER and pain coping skills are effective in helping people manage their pain from conditions such as cancer and osteoarthritis. The benefits include improved pain, increased ability to perform day-to-day activities, and greater confidence to manage pain.

This program was first developed by experienced health care professionals and research scientists, led by Dr Christine Rini at Hackensack University Medical Center (New Jersey, U.S.A.) and Dr Francis Keefe at Duke University Medical Center (North Carolina, U.S.A.). The painTRAINER program is a collaboration between these researchers with assistance from other researchers, experts in web-based health programs, experts in pain and coping skills, and a development team of software engineers and designers who specialize in web design. The current, updated program was created by researchers at the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine, Department of Physiotherapy, University of Melbourne, Australia, led by Professors Kim Bennell and Rana Hinman in collaboration with Dr Christine Rini and Dr Francis Keefe.

This program was first developed with funding by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Grant Number R01AR057346). The current, updated program has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence in Translational Research in Musculoskeletal Pain, Australia (Grant Number 1079078) and the Myeloma Division of the John Theurer Cancer Center of Hackensack University Medical Center (New Jersey, U.S.A.).

Information and skills training provided by painTRAINER is not meant to be a substitute for seeking medical care.  If you are having very severe pain that does not respond to treatment, if you feel very down, discouraged, depressed or very anxious, or if you have other symptoms that concern you, you should seek help from your regular healthcare provider.

The painTRAINER program is not appropriate for crisis help.

Activity responses are not monitored by painTRAINER. In case of an emergency please contact your country’s appropriate emergency services or go to your local emergency room.

None of the information you provide in painTRAINER will identify you. Any information will be used to help us understand who is using the program and how beneficial people have found it.

We are legally obligated to protect the integrity of your personal information. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

If you need immediate help with a medical problem or mental health problem, it is very important that you contact your regular healthcare provider. In case of an emergency within Australia please contact 000. Outside Australia please contact your country’s appropriate emergency services. Or go to your local emergency room.

We encourage that researchers contact paintrainer-research@unimelb.edu.au to notify the painTRAINER team that you intend to use painTRAINER for one of your research studies/trials. The painTRAINER program is freely available for researchers to use and we are even happy to provide a research-based registration at no cost. This helps us to better measure the impact and reach of the painTRAINER platform. Additional services are available at a cost such as analytics reports for capturing numerous variables (e.g. session completion, session time, total time) for your participants that you may discuss by contacting our team. The painTRAINER team will not share any information of users that are not associated with your study.