ABSTRACT
The American Academy of Pain Management (AAPM) was founded in 1988 as a nonprofit corporation by Drs. Richard and Kathryn Weiner (now Padgett). The Weiners’ vision was that a professional membership organization, designed specifically to meet the educational and professional needs of clinicians in the emerging discipline of inter/multidisciplinary pain management, could best accomplish its goals by offering certification of professionals, continuing education, university-based specialty training, legislative advocacy, pain facility accreditation, and outcomes benchmarking of pain program success. By 2002, when Richard Weiner passed away, the AAPM had become the largest multidisciplinary pain practitioner membership organization in the nation with 6,000 members from many different professional disciplines including medical and osteopathic physicians, chiropractic physicians, podiatrists, dentists, psychologists, social workers, acupuncturists, clergy, nurses, pharmacists, physical and occupational therapists, rehabilitation counselors, massage therapists, and others.
