You had the power all along, my dear – Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz
#AADE19 is a wrap! And what an exciting (and scorching) week we had in Houston, TX! The over 100 degree temperatures kept us from venturing outside much, but we enjoyed the view of the Texas shaped lazy river just outside our hotel window.
Change is here!
It’s difficult to describe the thrill of being immersed in learning through cutting edge, high quality sessions with more than 3000 other people passionate about supporting individuals affected by diabetes to live long and happy lives. And to learn that our specialty (formerly Diabetes Educator) has a new name: Diabetes Care and Education Specialist! This repositioning and new title fully acknowledges us as trusted experts of the integrated care team that provide collaborative, comprehensive, and person-centered care and education to people with and at risk for diabetes. Woohoo! More to come!
Taking a solution-focused approach to managing diabetes
A description of our presentation “Applying the Miracle Question in Diabetes” at #AADE19 can be found in the online conference planner. We were honored to be one of the over 130 sessions attendees could choose from. Can you see the joy in our faces below at the crowd filling the room (late on a Friday afternoon nonetheless) to learn about taking a solution focused approach to managing diabetes rather than a “traditional problem-focused” approach?
In quick illustration, here’s a comparison from one of our slides showing how a solution-focused approach differs from a traditional counseling approach. The traditional counseling approach tends to focus on what’s “wrong” and identifying how to “fix” it, whereas a solution focused approach focuses on those times when things are going well, and leveraging those past successes to do more of what’s going well.
What is the Miracle Question?
The Miracle Question applied to diabetes is one tool or technique, if you will, that can be implemented as part of a solution-focused approach to help clients envision a future that is more problem-free. You can learn more about the Miracle Question applied to diabetes in a previous blog post here. The Miracle Question has powerful impact. It is creative, bold, healing, a bit mysterious sounding (and has a cool name!). It allows a person to step out of their current problem story to a time when the problem occurs less. It helps people identify “exceptions” or times when the problem doesn’t occur, but could have. We think of exceptions as similar to “Bright Spots” (From Adam Brown’s Bright Spots and Landmines) or times and choices that work well for people. The Miracle Question challenges a person to look past their obstacles and feelings of hopelessness to focus on possibilities, opportunities and a vision for the future. (Hmmm sounds like the Mission of @AFreshPOVforYou!). The goal is to help one identify what they’ve actually known all along, and that they have the power to make choices and changes that can move them forward.
We value the voice of those that live with diabetes every day and listen intently to inform our work. We have some intriguing findings from a study we conducted that will be presented in September at an international diabetes conference, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, in Barcelona, Spain. And other insightful learnings to guide our work from focus groups, surveys, and interviews we’ve conducted. Many have asked if we’ll share that information. Stay tuned! We will soon reveal more through three peer-reviewed publications – one of those being an international publication.
If you are a health care professional and interested in learning more about our solution-focused practice and approach, we invite you to subscribe to our blog, and we will send you in return a FREE resource of 10 Solution-Focused Questions to start a solution-focused discussion with your clients.
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