Volunteering in the diabetes space sends a number of opportunities/privileges my way, one such opportunity was to co-facilitate a workshop on “The Value of Peer Support from the Perspective of People with Diabetes, Clinicians & Educators” at the Diabetes Self Management Alliance DSMA Conference in Stockholm, Sweden in January 27-28 and my co-conspirators, I mean, my co-facilitators were:
Tina Blichfeldt, person with diabetes and service user representative from Steno Diabetes Centre, Denmark,
Bastian Hauck, person with diabetes and founder of, #dedoc° Diabetes Online Community, Germany and
Mette Due-Christensen, Diabetes Specialist Nurse and Post Doc Researcher, Diabetes Management Research Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen and King’s College London
The DSMA Peer Support Workshop facilitators.
Disclosure: I have been a member of the DSMA organising team since 2018 and in that role I help facilitate workshops at the event and my travel expenses are reimbursed by NUIG as a person with diabetes representative.
Our aim in this workshop was to encourage support for diabetes peer support from healthcare professionals and maybe that they would consider integrating it into the service they provide.
However, this workshop was also a learning experience for me personally even though I have been facilitating diabetes support groups in Clare for over 12 years. Note to self: check yo self! And there is always, ALWAYS something new to learn!!!
Here’s a few things I’d like to share
What’s in a Name
When we started our groups in Clare we called it a diabetes support group because similarly named groups existed for other conditions, diseases and life situations. It never would have occurred to me to call it Peer Support: that was the name placed on it by others. I learned in this workshop that there are many names for our groups: Self Help groups, Community Groups and some geniuses come up with their own unique name such as The Lancelots”, and yes I’m really jealous of that one, or The Insulin Gang” are just two that spring to mind.
Whatever the group is called it’s important to have a group description so that people understand that these groups are about helping each other. I’m reminded of a conversation with a fellow group leader where she had to explain to a member that they didn’t sit around comparing BG numbers at all and it was about sharing what we do that helps us in the daily challenges of living with diabetes. This brings me nicely to what Bastian said in his presentation that “Diabetes support is sharing”. We all know that “Sharing is Caring” and when we feel cared for, we feel like we can take over the world.
Barriers to Accessing Support
Remove as many barriers as possible for people to access support. This lesson came from Bastian who founded the German diabetes support network #DEDOC. The easier you make it for people to become part of it, the more people will join. If you create a special website with a login, a fee, a membership, etc, you have lost people already. Use the tools that people already use such as Facebook, Twitter, Insta, etc. But, also, do not forget about the people who do not use social media to engage with the diabetes community and don’t rely on online only.
How Do Health Professionals Feel about Supporting Peer Support
All four facilitators expected the obvious barriers of Time and Money to be presented at our workshops but there were quite a few other barriers that were discussed also.
If I had to sum up all 3 of our workshops in a couple of bullet points it would be:
The first obstacle for some healthcare professionals seems to be lack of experience/knowledge in this area: where to start? How do I go about doing this? This led me to realise that healthcare professionals would really appreciate guidance and information on the practical side of establishing peer support.
It's important to provide healthcare professionals with the published research on the benefits of diabetes peer support, there is lots of it out there, so that they can convince colleagues to support it. In addition to this, having testimonials from other healthcare professionals on the benefits to healthcare professionals by providing this service which also helps them also "sell" the idea to colleagues.
Involving people with diabetes from the very, very beginning is an important factor in how it is shaped and delivered. This is not automatically one of the first steps that many hcps think of, so a reminder is valuable.
Addressing the issue that if healthcare professionals don't have full control of the information being shared in groups that the information will still be good. This is where I loved the suggestion from Workshop 1 Table 1 "healthcare professionals should direct to "good“ resources and provide orientation. Group acknowledged that oven the group itself acts like a peer review group when misinformation / myths surface"
Health professionals would benefit from our support to promote or support diabetes peer support.
In our workshop, we focused on just two forms of support: face to face groups and online support, but we did acknowledge that there are many more forms that peer support can take and never underestimate the power of just two people meeting up for a drink or a cuppa.
