Empowering Dialogues Within: A Workbook for Helping Professionals and Their Clients

leondumoulin.nl: Brooks/Cole Empowerment Series: The Skills of Helping Individuals, Customers who bought this item also bought The Social Work Skills Workbook Lawrence Shulman is a professor, as well as a former dean, in the School of Social Work . The inclusion of dialogue from previous sessions is wonderful.
Table of contents

Patient education should be patient-centered and empowering. The patients should be provided with individual, contextually targeted education that focuses on what patients themselves can do at home and in their everyday life prior to, during and after medical treatments [ 1 ]. In patient-centered education, the patients are engaged in active dialogue with health care professionals to continuously define their knowledge expectations and in terms of the choice of educational activities and evaluation of their comprehension during and after the education.

Furthermore, patient-centered education includes a relevant and accountable response to the identified knowledge expectations, the inter-professional coordination of educational interventions and the analysis of patient education outcomes from the perspectives of both the patient and the health care personnel. Due to this conceptual duality, in this study, the term knowledge expectation is applied.

Recognition of such inadequateness is a vital step in the process of empowerment , enabling people to recognize their strengths and personal power with assistance of information [ 6 ]. In this paper, the focus is on the development process of a new self-report workbook intended to assist adult cancer patients to identify and communicate their knowledge expectations during the illness trajectory. Empowering patient education has been identified [ 8 ] to integrate six types of knowledge required by patients to manage their health problems: These knowledge domains have been validated in several studies in different contexts [ 9 , 10 ].

The critical moments of cancer trajectory according to the patients themselves are the following:. By continuously encouraging the cancer patients to analyze and recognize their knowledge expectations at these critical moments of illness trajectory, the cancer care personnel can offer empowering education intended to help individuals to identify and find their own skills and strengths [ 1 ]. In other words, the focus is shifted from the delivery of general information to patient-centered, empowering education and from illness to actual possibilities, active participation in decision-making and self-care.

Kate Cohen-Posey

However, the professionals always have an ethical obligation to provide the obligatory information, e. In the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer questionnaire [ 11 ], the focus is on biological and medical issues, as is also the case for the Patient Information Need Questionnaire [ 12 ]. In the Toronto Informational Needs Questionnaire, the subscales include psychosocial items as well [ 13 ], but no financial or ethical issues. The Information Styles Questionnaire [ 14 ] focuses on information satisfaction.

Journal of Nursing & Care

Furthermore, all these instruments are applied in a certain situation, usually at the beginning of the illness trajectory, apart from the Patient Learning Needs Scale [ 15 ], which is applied at discharge. A self-report workbook is not only a means to activate and empower cancer patients in their education, but also a tool to assess the perceived quality of education from the viewpoint of patients during the patient education process and to develop an interdisciplinary approach to patient education.

With such an individualized aid, the patients would be encouraged to regulate their own patient education, and to be involved in decisionmaking concerning their care. The health care personnel, in turn, could use the data for guidance in patient education planning, coordination and evaluation [ 16 ].


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In this paper, the aim is to describe the development process of a self-report workbook intended to assist adult cancer patients to identify and communicate their knowledge expectations during the critical moments of their illness trajectory. The research question is: How to develop a relevant content and a clear structure for a self-report workbook to enable adult cancer patients identify and communicate their knowledge expectations during the critical moments of their illness trajectory?

The workbook development process is a part of a research project aimed to provide a model of empowering patient education for cancer patients during their illness trajectory. The self-report workbook development process was implemented among samples of actual and former cancer patients, which can be seen as a patient-centered, empowering approach [ 17 ]. The general principles of research ethics [ 18 ] were applied. Ethical approval was granted by relevant hospital ethical committees, as was the permission for data collection from the local cancer association.

In each data collection phase, the informants were asked to sign a written informed consent. In order to constitute a relevant content and structure for a selfreport workbook, data collection was performed in four phases.

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These data collection and analysis phases have been reported on earlier in other papers, and therefore are not described here in detail. These patients had different primary cancer sites, e. The respondents were recruited from a Finnish university hospital with two oncologic wards, two outpatient clinics with special expertise in oncologic treatment.

The focus group also included former cancer patients with experience in peer support; they were recruited through the local cancer association.

The data thus collected served as the basis for the content of empowering patient education in oncologic context, i. The data served as the basis of the structure of the self-report workbook, i. The instrument has been validated in several studies. Also in these samples, the patients showed a wide range of primary cancer sites gastroenterological , neurological , hematological, nephrological, etc. Fourth, the usability and internal consistency of the self-report workbook was explored. Obtaining evidence for content validity is a process that judges the adequacy of the specific content sampling and the adequacy with which the content is reflected in the instrument items [ 19 ].

The usability, relevance and clarity of the initial version of the self-report workbook were explored in a sample of actual and former cancer patients recruited from three organizations: In terms of an expert sample, 2 to 20 experts with different perspectives on the focus area of the research are considered as representative enough [ 21 ]. Because there has been criticism concerning the inter-rater mean CVI Content Validity Index and its ability to capture the relevance of a set of items instead of single items, both item-level I-CVI and subscale-level S-CVI content validity indices [ 22 ] were calculated.

We also explored whether cancer patients in different parts of illness trajectory differ with regard to their perceptions of knowledge expectations. The self-report workbook contains 24 pages size B5 with 10 subscales, which are named according to the critical moments of cancer trajectory. These comprise a total of knowledge expectation items and possible further specifying sub-questions. With the self-report workbook, adult cancer patients are assumed to identify their knowledge expectations with reference to their current illness trajectory phase and communicate their knowledge expectations to cancer nurses, radiology nurses and oncologists.

While reading the items knowledge expectations and rating them by marking the suitable option and date: The content validity of the workbook appears to be rather good; the inter-rater mean I-CVI varied from 0.


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    5. The subscales helped the respondents to identify their own position in terms of the illness trajectory, and they found the items easy to understand. Thus, the clarity of the subscales from 3. To be included in the next version of the self-report workbook, importance values exceeding 3. Thus, altogether 13 items from four different subscales including 9 items from Subscale 3 were identified as items to be excluded from the next version. Eight subscales of ten exceeded the minimum level of 0. In the fourth data set, some subscales were found to relate with the importance ratings.

    Respondents who had just received their diagnosis or were waiting for their cancer treatments to begin i. These findings validate, in some degree, the critical moments of illness trajectory established in the first three data sets, but, due to the small sample size, not at a statistically significant level. This study describes the development process of a self-report workbook designed to assist adult cancer patients to identify and communicate their knowledge expectations to cancer nurses, radiology nurses and oncologists during their whole illness trajectory.

    The study is a part of a project with a goal to develop a model for empowering patient education for cancer patients. The respondents in our four data sets wanted to know about not only the current phase of their illness trajectory, but also about the future. The key feature of our workbook is that the patients can choose what they actually want to know about at the given moment, and what not yet — i. This training has been developed and piloted for a wide range of people including: A modified version of this training emphasizing self help skill building and no simulation experience is available for voice hearers who want to learn to control or eliminate distressing voices.

    Hearing voices that are distressing is a training in which participants use headphones for listening to a specially designed audiotape. During this simulated experience of hearing voices, participants undertake a series of tasks including social interaction in the community, a psychiatric interview, cognitive testing, and an activities group in a mock day treatment program. The simulation experience is followed by a debriefing and discussion period.

    The workshop also includes: A lecture exploring the research and literature on hearing distressing voices Presentation of self-help strategies for coping with or eliminating distressing voices Practice exercises where participants learn to teach self-help skills to voice hearers Learning goals for this workshop: To empathize more deeply with the challenges voice hearers face To reduce the fear and stigma surrounding the voice hearing experience To learn to teach self help skills to voice hearers Arranging a workshop for your group: Workshops can be tailored to meet your organization's needs.

    It is suggested that not more than 40 people be trained at one time. Call the National Empowerment Center at for more information. The beauty of this curriculum is that people want to do it and don't consider it a chore, a demand, or a requirement, because every page subtly encourages the individual to think in realistic and forward-moving ways.

    This allows them to feel good about doing the work.

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    I based this book on my personal life and recovery, and every page has been used successfully in peer group settings. He has struggled immensely with mental health issues throughout his life, but he has successfully transformed this into a life of wellness. He has embraced his recovery process, producing remarkably beneficial results. He has discovered that he has innate skills and capabilities for helping others in their recovery, and he has been able to help many people improve the quality of their lives, which is life-affirming for him. He does this by tapping into his lived experience to help others transcend their own struggles.

    He is sincerely committed to his recovery and helping nurture the recovery and wellness of all with whom he comes into contact. Craig is successfully working as part of an outreach team at a human services agency in Boston, Massachusetts. He also tours the country, speaking about his lived experience, sharing his struggles and triumphs to help others. The Dialogues of Discovery book tour is a testament to the power of dialogue to transform consciousness and an invitation to explore topics touched on in the book, such as; How do you redefine who you are?

    How do you fill the emptiness in your soul? How do you come to know who you were born to be? How do you find liberation for yourself and others? How do you access and trust your own innate wisdom? Ms Spiro is passionate about developing our capacity for compassion, appreciating the vast intelligence and creativity of the human mind, and co-creating pathways so everyone may come home.

    I was especially inspired by her courage to challenge racism in the context of a terrible crime. The message is clear: A revealing story that will help other survivors of loss and trauma find hope and possibilities. With refreshing insight she graciously shares her journey and the tools and resources that have been the wind beneath her wings. Living for Two is a love story that celebrates the fragility of humankind and the resiliency of one very brave and wise little girl. Harmon , author, Mandala Project: Her recovery and transformation after senseless violence, profound loss, spiritual emergency and extreme mental states exemplify hope, resilience and post-traumatic growth.

    People in recovery, psychology and social work students, helping professionals, children of violence, and others will find this small volume worthwhile. Living for Two takes its place in the literature of personal challenge and recovery, and the ensuing social activism they engender. This memoir should be read by all who work in the mental health field. A question we must answer with our own lives and hearts. Thank you Lauren for being real, vulnerable, and sharing your story which will ultimately empower others to share theirs.

    Get Up, Stand Up: Many Americans have lost confidence that genuine democracy is possible, and Get Up Stand Up explains how major US institutions have created fatalism.

    Development of a Self-Report Workbook for Identifying Cancer Patients Knowledge Expectations

    When such fatalism and defeatism sets in, truths about economic injustices and lost liberties are not enough to set people free something else is required. For democratic movements to get off the ground, individuals must recover self-respect, and a people must regain collective confidence that they can succeed at eliminating top-down controls. Get Up, Stand Up details those strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have successfully employed to gain power. Anatomy of an Epidemic: Whitaker is at the height of his powers. Greg Critser, author of Generation Rx Why are so many more people disabled by mental illness than ever before?

    Why are those so diagnosed dying years earlier than others? In Anatomy of an Epidemic investigative reporter Robert Whitaker cuts through flawed science, greed and outright lies to reveal that the drugs hailed as the cure for mental disorders instead worsen them over the long term. But Whitaker's investigation also offers hope for the future: Whitaker tenderly interviews children and adults who bear witness to the ravages of mental illness, and testify to their newly found aliveness when freed from the prison of mind-numbing drugs. The approach is neither polemical nor ideologically slanted.

    Relying on medical evidence and historical documentation, Whitaker builds his case like a prosecuting attorney.


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      6. In making a compelling case that our current psychotropic drugs are causing as much if not more harm than good, Robert Whitaker reviews the scientific literature thoroughly, demonstrating how much of the evidence is on his side. There is nothing unorthodox here this case is solid and evidence-backed. If psychiatry wants to retain its credibility with the public, it will now have to engage with the scientific argument at the core of this cogently and elegantly written book.

      This is itself a wise and necessary book essential reading for all those who have experienced, or care for those who have experienced, mental illness which means all of us! Robert Whitaker is a reliable, sensible, and persuasive, guide to the paradoxes and complexities of what we know about mental illness, and what we might be able to do to lessen the suffering it brings.

      Jay Neugeboren, author of Imagining Robert andTransforming Madness Every so often a book comes along that exposes a vast deceit. Robert Whitaker has written that sort of book. Drawing on a prodigious quantity of psychiatric literature as well as heart-rending stories of individual patients, he exposes a deeply disturbing fraud perpetrated by the drug industry and much of modern psychiatry at horrendous human and financial cost to patients, their families, and society as a whole.

      Scrupulously reported and written in compelling but unemotional style, this book shreds the myth woven around todays psychiatric drugs. One day, we will look back at the way we think about and treat mental illness and wonder if we were all mad. Anatomy of an Epidemic should be required reading for both patients and physicians. A Way Out of Madness offers guidance in resolving family conflict and taking control of your life.