Description
Diagnose, manage, and treat primary and secondary headache disorders with a nonsurgical, evidence-based focus, using pharmacologic, procedural, neuromodulatory, and behavioral therapies.
- • Participate in headache medicine research and clinical trials.
- • Train residents, fellows, and staff in headache evaluation and management.
- • Engage in continuing education and maintain certification in headache medicine.
- • Supervise clinic and infusion staff delivering headache therapies.
- • Counsel patients on headache biology, triggers, lifestyle, and genetic or environmental risks.
- • Order and interpret neuroimaging to evaluate red flags and secondary causes.
- • Refer patients to emergency care or other specialists when indicated.
- • Advise other clinicians on headache diagnosis and treatment.
- • Prescribe acute and preventive therapies and monitor efficacy and adverse effects.
- • Administer onabotulinumtoxinA, peripheral nerve blocks, trigger-point, and sphenopalatine ganglion blocks.
- • Document histories, exam findings, disability scores, treatment plans, and outcomes.
- • Manage complex disorders such as chronic migraine, cluster headache, TACs, NDPH, and medication-overuse headache.
- • Order or interpret labs and cerebrospinal fluid studies when secondary headache is suspected.
- • Coordinate behavioral therapy, physical therapy, nutrition counseling, and social services.
- • Conduct comprehensive headache interviews, including phenotype, triggers, aura, disability, and comorbidities.
- • Educate patients and families on diagnoses, prognosis, and the benefits, risks, and costs of treatments.
- • Establish differential diagnoses and confirm headache types using ICHD criteria.
- • Develop individualized plans combining medications, procedures, neuromodulation, and lifestyle changes.
- • Triage thunderclap headache and other emergencies and rule out acute secondary causes per guidelines.
- • Communicate with primary care, pain medicine, psychiatry, sleep medicine, ENT, and ophthalmology.
- • Coordinate care transitions, follow-ups, and infusion protocols for status migrainosus.
- • Perform or coordinate lumbar puncture when indicated.
- • Interpret headache diaries and digital biomarkers to guide therapy.
- • Identify and treat comorbid sleep, mood, and cervical myofascial disorders impacting headache.
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Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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Last reviewed: Jan 2026
