Paul Arnstein (CSON)

Promoted to associate professor with tenure

Ph.D., Boston College

Faculty member since 1998

Specialization: Pain management

Representative publication: “Optimizing perioperative pain management” (AORN Journal, 2002)

“The narrow thinking that medications are the only way to control persistent pain has resulted in a lot of suffering. Usually patients refer to me when the doctors and surgeons have said, ‘There’s nothing else we have to offer you, you just have to learn to live with it.’ I help them learn to live with pain through diet and exercise, their relationships, their thinking patterns. Pain is the epitome of subjectivity, and all the studies of technologies to objectify pain have failed. The gold standard is that pain is what the person says is occurring, when they say that it does. In Massachusetts, nearly 40 percent of adults have persistent pain—but people don’t want to talk about it. For me, a real source of energy has been in my involvement with grassroots organizations, such as Power Over Pain, which will educate thousands of health care professionals and citizens in Massachusetts about the issues of pain as a public health problem.”