Dr. Lorraine Wright and I (along with our colleagues Wendy Watson Nelson and Nancy Moules) have offered the Family Externship Workshop since 1987.
I just had lunch with a nurse who completed the Externship workshop in 2001. She came to the workshop disillusioned with her nursing career and with well developed plans to leave nursing and become an interior designer. She told me that workshop helped clarify her beliefs about what she valued and gave her new skills and confidence to offer therapeutic conversations with the individuals and families experiencing cancer. She has never looked back and is now in a senior nursing leadership position, still advocating for compassionate, family focused care that acknowledges that all health care occurs within a RELATIONSHIP. The workshop focuses on increasing capacity of health care providers to enter into relationships with individuals and families and address illness suffering and family healing.
Dr. Lorraine Wright and I are planning to offer another 5 day Family Externship workshop in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada in September 2009 May 2010 at Predator Ridge Golf Resort http://www.predatorridge.com
This 5 day Externship workshop provides clinical practice knowledge for nurses and other health care practitioners working with families experiencing illness. Participants will gain practical guidelines and skills to address illness suffering and family healing. Widely recognized family nursing practice models: Calgary Family Assessment Model, Calgary Family Intervention Model, Illness Beliefs Model, and Trinity Model will be used to guide the learning. We’re feeling brave and experimental as we launch our new book (www.illlnessbeliefsmodel.com)! I would appreciate your help in distributing this news to your colleagues who work with families experiencing serious illness and would like to learn more about our practice models.
Please contact me at jmbell@ucalgary.ca for a schedule of events and the registration forms for the May 2010 offering of this exciting and potentially life-changing learning experience.