MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS should always pay due attention and prescribe adequate treatment for pain control among patients, Dr Willy Kiviri, the chairperson of Rwanda Pain Society, has said.Dr Kaviri was last week speaking during a two-day workshop that brought together about 45 medical practitioners from both public and private health institutions operating from across the country.The workshop is part of the Continued Professional Development (CPD), a programme that seeks to build capacity for health professionals, Dr Kiviri said. It also aimed at disseminating recent guidelines on pain management that were adopted late last year.The document was developed by the Ministry of Health with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Management Sciences of Health (MSH) Integrated Health System Strengthening Project (IHSSP) and Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services.The Pain Management Guidelines, as the document is named, details protocols and guidelines that are designed to provide a useful resource for healthcare professionals involved in clinical case management in Rwanda.Dr Kiviri said the document is a helpful tool for all medical practitioners to know how to respond to patients presenting pains.He said the workshop was organised partly to disseminate the protocols embedded in the document "such that we elaborate on their use, be able to know what is in these guidelines and to explain to our colleagues their usefulness.”He noted that patients have sometimes endured severe pain as a result of the lack of appropriate attention to their situation. "Pain management has been one domain which we have not been usually paying attention to in the sense that we do not always assess the details of patients’ pain,” Dr Kiviri said."We need to give it time.”He noted that such situation sometimes results in patients delaying to get well quick or developing other complications.Dr Jean Marie Vianney Nduwimana, the managing director of Iramiro Clinic, a Kigali-based private clinic, vowed to use the acquired skills to the benefit of patients.He said during the workshop he acquired new practices and approaches to take care of patients and have good manners while responding to them."I hope now to improve on what I have been doing (while responding to a patient with pain),” Dr Nduwimana said.