March 2010 Highlights

Last month we brought you news of Bob Anderson’s visit to SD, and we were preparing to go to the Diabetes UK professional conference in Liverpool. We had a great time, meeting up with many of you as well as lots of other friends and colleagues. Bob’s presentation was to a packed audience who really enjoyed hearing about his empowerment approach first hand. The photo shows Bob in action at the conference.

February 2010 Highlights

Our highlight this month is the visit to Successful Diabetes of Bob Anderson, our friend and colleague. We spent a few days together ahead of Bob’s presentation to the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference in March. The photo shows us with Bob during our discussions.

Why is Bob an important person in the world of diabetes care? His official position is as Professor and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.  His research centres on the Empowerment Approach, which he created, named and has repeatedly shown the value of in supporting people in living with their diabetes. For example, Bob has shown that people with diabetes are more likely to discover useful information by asking questions themselves than by answering health professionals’ questions. So when health professionals concentrate on discovering and working with a person’s main concern about their diabetes, rather than their own, that brings about change in their lives. Also, it is important to concentrate on a person’s feelings and values rather than simply their test results, as this makes a difference to their confidence in managing their condition. We’ve provided a more detailed description of the empowerment approach as the subject of our first SD Focus section, so you can find out more.

Although Bob has provided a great deal of scientific evidence for the Empowerment Approach, he is most interested in exploring the conditions in which a health professional and a person with diabetes can work together to enable the person to reach their personal goals and wishes for their life. This approach requires health professionals to recognise that people are in charge of their lives, regardless of what they (the health professionals) think, and that the decisions the person makes every day have more impact on their health-related outcomes than the decisions that a health professional might make on their behalf. This means that health professionals need to listen more and talk less, to encourage questions rather than provide instruction, and when they do ask questions, to ask open questions without pre-judging or assuming the answers.

Bob’s definition of the empowerment approach is ‘helping patients discover and develop their inherent capacity to be responsible for their own lives and gain mastery over their diabetes’. Jill and Rosie (who run Successful Diabetes) had already started to adopt this philosophy in their work and since 1998, we have been friends and have collaborated with Bob on our empowerment work.

We have worked with Bob to ‘spread the word’ about the Empowerment Approach in the UK over many years, running workshops and writing many articles.

Bob is a warm and generous human being who has been a willing source of inspiration and support to us as well as thousands of others worldwide over many years, and we are so proud to welcome him to our offices this week!

January 2010 Highlights

This month we have been running our care planning and consultation skills workshops and facilitating our SCO-TT online learning courses, but our main highlight of January was a 4-day visit to Kuwait to provide diabetes update workshops for health professionals providing medical care for staff in the oil industry there.

Kuwait, in the Middle East, is one of the top 10 countries in the world for the highest prevalence of Type 2 diabetes, so up to date and specialist diabetes care is essential. We were delighted to be invited to help in this process and designed a programme that the participants really enjoyed as well as learning a great deal from.

In our spare time, after the workshops each day, we were able to enjoy escaping from the snow and ice in the UK to the warm weather, and we took the chance to swim in the Gulf as well as to learn about the culture and traditions of this tiny country. It was a fascinating and useful experience and we hope to go again to provide some more workshops.