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Chronic pain results in significant personal, societal and economic burden. Doctors and nurses have a pivotal role in patient pain management. In order to determine the effectiveness of current pain education on knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of medical and nursing students, there needs to be a valid measure to assess and quantify these domains. We reviewed the literature to identify approaches for assessing knowledge, perceptions and attitudes to pain management among nursing and medical students.

Databases of peer-reviewed literature including CINAHL, EMBASE, ERIC, PsycInfo, Medline and PubMed were searched for articles published between 1993 and December 2014 using the following search terms: student, graduate, intern, junior, pain, pain management, analgesia, analgesic, pharmacology, pharmacological, knowledge, competence, attitude, preparedness, practice …