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Looking for a Quick Fix When Scheduling Your Education Sessions?



Cathy Cabanban, RD, LDN, CDEI am just getting over some type of bug. I spent all day Sunday in bed, feeling bad that I was wasting the day yet not able to get up and do anything. I lost my appetite for a few days but as soon as I began to feel better, I thought, "What can I eat or drink that will make me feel better quickly? Tea with lemon and honey? Or maybe some dry cereal? Minestrone soup? A brownie????" I suppose I was searching for the quick fix that would make me feel 100% again and for some reason I thought that would be as easy as opening up the refrigerator! Of course, I know that it is just rest and time that will get me well, not a magical bite or two of food.

Many of our patients are looking for the same "quick fix" for their diabetes. I have frequently been asked by patients, usually while they were standing in my office doorway, "May I just talk to you for two minutes so you can tell me what to eat?" I would encourage them to schedule an appointment for Diabetes Self-Management Education/Training (DSME/T) classes, and sometimes they would walk out the door, never to be seen again.

At my last workplace, a gentlemen would come in every six months or so with his lab reports. It was difficult for me to understand him, as he spoke very little English. He would give me his labs, and tell me to write down on a piece of paper the foods he should eat to bring his A1c down. Each time, I would suggest that he schedule an appointment. I told him I would get an interpreter, and that we would sit down and go over all of his questions. He would shake his head and say he didn't have time. He wanted a quick fix.

Does this human behavior of wanting the "path of least resistance" affect the way you set up your DSME/T classes? What is the best way to configure your Conversation Map® sessions? Are you tempted to just do a "one and done" so patients can get in and out quickly?

Some educators schedule all day Saturday marathons, with two or three Conversation Map sessions back-to-back. Though certainly you are free to schedule your programs as you wish, can you see why several sessions back-to-back may not be a good practice? For one thing, a patient in this scenario has no time to work on making behavioral changes from their first session. Nor would they have time to speak to their support person/s and ask for the help they need. Not to mention digesting, reflecting on, and practicing some of the solutions they discovered during their first session. So while the all day marathon may seem like a good solution to getting it all in, it probably is not the best way to go about scheduling Conversation Map sessions.

We want to balance making the sessions convenient for our patients, while not compromising the behavioral changes resulting from goal setting that only can occur over time. Since the Maps were designed as a complete, stand-alone curriculum for DSME/T, consider scheduling one Conversation Map session per week over four weeks, or even one session every two weeks. If you work with a population that may have trouble completing a Map session in two hours, feel free to split each map into two one-hour sessions.

What does the structure of your program look like? Have you had any challenges to scheduling sessions to meet your patient's needs while fitting in to your schedule? Let me know!

Cathy


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