Declarations of Interest

The Australian Pain Society (APS) recognises the potential for conflicts of interests to arise in relation to its purpose of advancing pain management and clinical practice, and seeks to proactively mitigate these conflicts as part of core business operations. The society has a robust Declaration of Interest procedure which is stringently followed to facilitate the open acknowledgement of potential conflicts and ensure that the activities of its volunteer office bearers and paid staff are in keeping with the best interests of the society at all times. This procedure involves:

• Awareness of participating individuals of the concepts of competing or conflicting interests.
• Open disclosure of potential conflicts for executive discussion on, or before, each meeting.
• Register of all current and previous 5 years of competing interests of office bearers updated at a minimum, yearly.
• Confirmation of registered conflicts at each executive meeting of the society.
• Promoting removal of competing interests (where appropriate) prior to assuming executive roles.
• Exclusion from discussion and voting regarding decisions of the executive where significant conflicts are reported, as deemed by the executive.
• Ensuring the availability of a “Register of Interests” of office bearers upon request from members of the society.

The APS ceased ‘corporate subscribers’ from January 2021 in order to further mitigate potential conflicts of interest within society operations.  Prior to that, the APS had received unencumbered corporate subscriptions at various time points from Seqirus, Mundipharma and Pfizer. All support was registered with Medicines Australia in compliance with their code of conduct.

Please contact the APS Secretariat if you would like to review the Declaration of Interest Register.