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.
Related specializations
Interview options
Interview options
Interviewee gender
Interviewee accent
Available on paid plans only
Interview time
Related Pathways
Healthcare & Human Services
View
Source
Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
Learn more
Sources & Standards:
This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
