Family Externship workshop: A Life-Changing Moment

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. Read More >>

Practice Units: Family Systems Perspective to Guide Practice with families experiencing illness

Practice Units (established for education, research and/or service) where a Family Systems approach is used to guide practice with families experiencing illness: Read More >>

5 Hot Tips for Writing Therapeutic Letters

Therapeutic letters were first introduced to the world of clinical practice with families by the creative clinical work of David Epston of New Zealand and the late Michael White of Australia (Epston, 1994; White, 1995; White & Epston, 1990). My colleagues, students, and I have used this intervention in our practice with families experiencing serious illness (Bell, Moules, & Wright, 2009). Together as a clinical team, we have written hundreds of therapeutic letters.

"The Letter" Rose Aimee Belanger

A recent special issue on Therapeutic Letters* has been published in the February 2009 issue of the Journal of Family Nursing* which features the doctoral thesis of Dr. Nancy Moules, whose research I supervised. David Epston called Nancy’s article in this special issue, “The Past and Future of Therapeutic Letters…”, the “best paper ever written on the subject”. Read More >>

Illness Beliefs Model – A new book

“I am always saying to myself; that’s not right yet. You can do it better – it’s rare when I can prevent myself from taking the thing up again… X number of times, the same thing. Sometimes, it becomes an absolute obsession. But for that matter, why would anyone work, if not for that? To express the same, but express it better. It’s always necessary to seek for perfection. Obviously, for us, this work no longer has the same meaning. To me, it means: from one canvas to the next, always go further, further… ” Pablo Picasso

I’m thrilled to announce the writing of my new co-authored book about the Illness Beliefs Model is finally FINISHED! My co-author, Dr. Lorraine Wright, and I are now working through the final publishing details and the book will be coming to a bookstore near you in June 2009. A Kindle Edition is now available. Read More >>

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