Patient education in pain control.

Patients' concerns about reporting pain and using analgesics have been cited as major contributors to the problem of inadequate pain management. The purpose of this paper is to describe a program of research in which we have focused on these patient concerns, or as we refer to them, "patient-related barriers to pain management." We present a summary of descriptive studies on this topic, describe educational interventions that have been tested, and suggest future avenues of research and practice.