Evaluating the impact of pain education: how do we know we have made a difference?

1. Education is a core activity for most healthcare professionals working in pain management and an effective evaluation strategy should assess its impact. 2. Evaluation may have one or more purposes: accountability, development or knowledge generation. Other key principles include making evaluation integral to the education process, reflecting with learners on progress, self-evaluation by the pain educator and involving all the key stakeholders. 3. A wide variety of methods are available, but the choice will be influenced by the nature and amount of the pain education, number of learners, purpose of the evaluation and time and resources available. 4. Patient education can be evaluated through knowledge and attitude questionnaires, concordance with the treatment plan, satisfaction and pain- and disability-related measures. 5. Further research is needed to explore the specific strategies or combination of techniques that are effective for different groups, and build on the theoretical base underpinning effective pain education and evaluation for patients and professionals. 6. The importance of education for the public has also been recently recognised, but this wider educational initiative should also be fully evaluated to assess whether this initiative is making a difference.