Professor & Associate Dean, Dept. of Physiological Nursing, UCSF School of Nursing

Interest Statement

(Excerpt from NurseWeek article, July 2003)

How did you get into nursing? Pain research?

I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, starting out as a candy striper in high school and, after graduation, went on to nursing school. It is what I’ve always wanted. Getting into pain research is a harder, more personal story. In the late ‘70s, my father had head and neck cancer. He died in horrific pain. I knew something was needed, but at that time didn’t know what it could be. When I finished my master’s degree in nursing, I worked with a neurologist at our hospital to develop a pain management service for inpatients and outpatients. This service provided care for patients with acute and chronic pain problems.

What did you find out about gender differences of pain perception in your research?

We were lucky to be able to evaluate how analgesics work using an acute pain model of wisdom teeth extractions. We worked with opiates and found that women get better analgesic effects from those drugs than men. This work opened up a field of research that had been previously overlooked. Other researchers now are looking at painful stimuli and finding that women are more sensitive to painful stimuli.

Biography

Christine Miaskowski, PhD, RN, FAAN, received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Molloy College in Rockville Centre, N.Y., in 1974 and was awarded a master’s degree in nursing from Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., in 1979. She received a master’s degree in biology in 1979 and a PhD in physiology from St. John’s University in Jamaica , N.Y., in 1984. She is a professor and chair of the department of physiological nursing at the University of California , San Francisco , and an internationally recognized expert on pain management. She has received many awards, including the Helen Nahm Distinguished Research Lecturer Award and the Distinguished Nurse Researcher Award from the Oncology Nursing Society in 2000. She is also the immediate past president of the American Pain Society.