As part of my work as Healthy Aging Coordinator for Springwell, I've been attending a training course for leaders of a workshop known as "My Life, My Health", a chronic disease self-management workshop developed by Stanford University. I had no idea what it was about before I started and thought it had something to do with actually managing the disease. But, in fact, it is really more about managing the effects of the disease (or chronic condition), effects such as fatigue, anxiety, depression, and other difficult feelings.
The content of the workshop is a wide-ranging toolkit of techniques and habits that the participants can pick and choose from and try out as they choose. Much of the course is discussion and brainstorming, where the participants can share ideas and help each other deal with their challenges. At the end of each meeting, the participants make an action plan for what they will do in the following week, and then report back at the following session. The action plans are totally personal and are whatever that participant feels they want to do and will be able to do.
We covered topics such as how to overcome pain and fatigue, relaxation techniques and deep breathing, good nutrition and exercise, how to communicate better, how to keep track of medications, positive thinking, etc.
The course itself is tightly scripted and the leaders are expected to follow the script exactly. Your organization giving the course must be licensed by Stanford, and the leaders must complete the 4-day training and be approved to teach. In the training, we go through every topic in excruciating detail. First the trainers conduct it as if we were the participants, then they reviewed it and explained why they did what they did, and then the trainees conducted the segment again as part of their practice teaching. So by the end of it we were pretty well indoctrinated.
The leaders themselves are expected to be people that either have a chronic condition themselves or are care-givers for someone with a chronic condition. This is pretty broadly drawn, so that most people of a certain age can probably come up with something they can use to relate to, even if it's just chronic back pain, arthritis, or any other minor ailment that impinges on their daily lives.
I started out a bit skeptical. It seemed that we were dealing with weighty topics and giving a small amount of time to each of them, so I wasn't sure what impact the course would have. Also, being widely read, I was already familiar with many of these ideas. What I need to keep in mind is that many of the people we will be meeting with may not be.
And then there was one little bit of magic that really impressed me. At the end of the training we did a brainstorming. The topic was "What problems does my chronic condition cause me?". So we brainstormed and made a list. Then the leaders re-posted the result of the exact same brainstorming we'd done at the beginning of the first day of the training. And by gosh, you could see the change. The same sorts of items were on both lists, but they were subtly altered. On the second list, they were either worded in a more positive manner, or were more specific and action-oriented. Something definitely happened there, and it was a good thing.
I originally took the course because I was going to manage and coordinate these workshops, but now I have a definite urge to actually teach one.
While I'm here on the blog, I'll mention that my job as coordinator is going well, but has been more work than I bargained for. I'm hoping that a lot of this is start-up effort, and that things will settle down as we move forward. One major time sink is a good thing - we got a very nice response from our call for volunteers. We'd inserted ads in the local papers in our service area (8 towns) and have gotten 16 responses so far. So it's a lot of people to call and interview and get to fill out our forms and so forth.
Also, I'll be teaching a Healthy Eating course with a new partner and at a new site on Monday nights as part of Watertown Adult Education. So that involves a lot of coordination - working things out with my new partner (who is very experienced with the other course, Chronic Disease Self Management, but has just been trained in Healthy Eating), figuring out how do deal with the room limitations, and assembling all the handouts and other paraphernalia we will need. We've got 12 people signed up, which is a perfect number. Although there are two husband and wife pairs, which has sometimes caused problems in the past - we shall see.
So life has been a teeny bit too darn busy, but hopefully it will settle down in a month or so. And I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm accomplishing something useful.
