Objective: To assess the knowledge of, and attitudes toward, cancer pain and cancer pain management of medical students who were going to be externs.

Design: A prospective analytic study.

Materials and methods: The medical students completed a questionnaire regarding their knowledge of, and attitudes toward, cancer pain and its management.

Results: One hundred and fifteen medical students (out of 132) completed the study. Seventy-six percent of the medical students thought that cancer pain patients requested higher doses of analgesics because their pain was getting worse. The majority of them (80.0%) either strongly disagreed or disagreed that pethidine was superior to morphine when treating cancer pain. Almost all the medical students (96.4%) strongly disagreed or disagreed that doses of opioids should be much lower than required to prevent an occurrence of drug tolerance. Eighty-six percent of the medical students thought that inadequate knowledge about pain management was a barrier to effective cancer pain management.

Conclusions: In general, the medical students showed proper knowledge regarding cancer pain and its management. They also demonstrated a positive attitude toward the use of opioids for the treatment of cancer pain. They thought that inadequate knowledge was the barrier to effective management in cancer patients. These data will be utilized to improve an educational program for cancer pain management in terms of both theory and practice.