If you or a loved one has ever gone through the stress of cancer treatment, you will understand how painful it can be.

While doctors and specialists do their best to manage the pain associated with cancer, care is often spread out across different services, which means pain management can be forgotten.

A new cancer pain trial is due to start mid-year, known as the Stop Cancer PAIN trial. It aims to implement national guidelines about how to treat pain in cancer patients. While Australia has recently developed cancer pain guidelines, they have not yet been tested in a clinical setting.

Jane Phillips is the Director of the Centre for Cardiovascular and Chronic Care and Professor of Palliative Nursing at UTS. Dr Tim Luckett research fellow in the Faculty of Health at UTS. Both are involved in the study, and spoke with me about their research.