Supporting chronic disease self management: course participant feedback

What the participants thought about the facilitators

• Clear presentation with reinforcement of main model & concepts
• Very clear information/ instructions presented, useful
• Informative, bite sized information, easily absorbed
• Excellent. Very clear and informative
• Rosemary is an animated and entertaining presenter
• ABCDE approach made it all user-friendly, very useful
• The presentation skills of all the staff were great.

What participants felt they learned

• Well presented. Simplified understanding of CBT. Valuable to my work in caring for patients who have complex chronic illness, social and emotional issues
• Good introduction to the principles. Very poignant guided imagery
• Very good overview of CBT, but could have been longer and more detailed. Very valuable to my work and interesting. (this year's course will be two days)
• Worthwhile, interesting to discuss barriers/strategies especially with variety of programs and background

Was it useful?

• Great ideas for thinking outside the square to get exercise. Will use some of these to encourage my patients to exercise more
• Introduced practical examples of CBT, gave good tips to use with patients
• Good program. Some new ideas on how to work material into rehab course.
• Insight to common barriers with patients
• Good reinforcement of CBT and ways to apply.
• Will be lots we can add to our program after this.
• Good discussion, thought provoking. We will be making many changes to how our program runs
• The manual is excellent.
• I liked that the renamed ABCDE model was repeatedly practiced using each of the areas of intervention. Helped to crystallise the model and see its "real world" usefulness. The presentation skills of all the staff were great. The pace was good and the support and encouragement were really helpful. The participant manual is great - valuable resource. Discussion sessions, good opportunity to break the ice with other participants in the class.

One participant's experience

In relation to the CBT (now CDSM) workshop we have found it one of the most valuable experiences to our cardiac rehabilitation professional development. It has provided a solid framework for listening and responding to adult learning needs. We are trying to integrate that into our education program with some good successes. For example our medications talk, rather than opening with the question "What medications are you taking?" which was our standard approach and has usually elicited the standard cardiac drug 4 response and given us the impression of complete compliance we followed the CBT example  and opened with "Wow there are a lot of medications you are now on - how do you all feel about taking that many medications?" We had a good group of about 5 gentleman and we opened the floor and allowed them to talk and below is the anecdotal responses we received:

"I hate it"

"So do I - in fact I hate it so much that I pick a day a week and chose not to have any of them"

"Me too - I figure the cholesterol one isn't as important so I only have that every second day"

"Yeah I do that with my blood pressure one I monitor it at home and it seems to be staying under control"

We made the point of not judging but tyring to listen and find out what was going on. We clearly had a group of intelligent men who were used to making decisions and needed that sense of control over what medications they were on. However they were not compliant with our medication regimes and in some instances they may not have been reaching therapeutic targets. The creation of an unthreatening, non judgemental, relaxed environment meant that we found be were able to continue the questioning down this path. As the clinical nurse facilitating the session I was able to use the CBT to maintain this open forum approach as well as referring to the pharmacist who was assisting facilitation of this group. Our pharmacist was able to answer questions and guide appropriate medication regimes while giving these men some flexibility in their approach to medication compliance. We have found it provides a forum for open discussion and we have learnt more about our clients and in turn are able to respond to them in a way that they feel involved and empowered.  

We will definitely be sending more staff along to the workshops next year to further embed these principles into our practice.