Improving cancer patients' pain control through education.

While patient accrual for this study is not yet complete, it appears that the intervention may be helping patients to feel more in control over their pain, take the correct medication dosage and take action to prevent side effects. At this point, the experimental subjects seem much less worried about tolerance to pain medications. The early results suggest some sociodemographic differences in response to pain which, if they persist, should probably be considered as factors in designing patient education programs.