Conferences can be worth your time and money
To get the most benefit, make selection with care
Can attending a conference make your job easier and improve the level of patient education at your institution? You bet! "I’ve picked up excellent tools at conferences, such as patient education documentation forms, that have saved me immeasurable time and energy in the development process and prevented me from reinventing the wheel," says Annette Mercurio, MPH, CHES, director of health education services at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, CA.
Tools you can adapt to the needs of your institution are definitely a benefit, agrees Donette Lasher, MAT, patient and family education coordinator at York (PA) Health System. At a conference sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, both located in Leawood, KS, Lasher learned some agenda-setting techniques for patient education that she presented at a staff development workshop.
These techniques helped staff work with patients to set an agenda for change. For example, if a patient needed to improve nutrition, lose weight, stop smoking, and manage stress better, the educator and patient would collaborate in pinpointing one change to make at that point in time. To lose weight, for instance, the patient might agree to begin a walking program. In such cases, the patient and educator decide together what to work on based on the patient’s readiness to learn in an area.
Conferences provide networking opportunities
In addition to tools, patient education managers also have a chance to learn from the successes and challenges colleagues have had in developing patient education programs, which makes their own efforts more effective, says Mercurio.
Conferences provide an opportunity to gather new information, either by attending the sessions or by networking with other professionals in your field. Most leave a conference with many contacts they can call when questions arise. "It gives you a whole set of minds to draw information from in the future," says Lasher.
Attending a conference provides an opportunity to learn and grow as well as to network, says Kathy Ordelt, RN, patient and family education coordinator at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. "I can’t teach and do a good job unless I’m prepared, and conferences are great preparation. I love to listen to others speak, for it often opens up new doors or new ways of looking at the same old stuff," she explains.
The latest research is often presented at conferences, as are the latest equipment, treatment, and disease management, says Rita Smith, MSN, RN, education coordinator at Provena Mercy Center in Aurora, IL. Smith likes to attend conferences and workshops presented by the American Association of Diabetes Educators in Chicago because diabetes education has become an important focus in her job. (For a list of conferences in the year 2000, see above.)
When selecting a conference, the location is extremely important because of cost control measures at Provena, says Smith. She is more likely to attend a conference in the Chicago area, which is within driving distance of her institution, than a conference in another city or state that would require airline travel and lodging, even if the registration fees at the local conference are high.
At City of Hope, Mercurio must include the costs associated with attending conferences in her budget, so she must decide in advance which ones she wants to attend. To help estimate costs, she contacts the travel department at her facility to obtain the average price of a round-trip ticket to and from the conference location.
Limited funding for travel means patient education managers must be very astute when selecting conferences. To make the selection process easier, create a set of criteria to measure the conference against, suggests Mercurio. She selects conferences that relate specifically to her work in the cancer field and address issues with which she is struggling.
With her job narrowly focused on cancer education, Mercurio also likes to attend conferences that help her stay current with broader practice and research in health education. Sometimes she attends a conference because she is a speaker. (For information on speaking at a conference, see article on p. 9.)
Lasher generally wants conferences to give her new information "If the workshops and the sessions appear to be something that I feel comfortable with already, it might not be worth the time or the expense," she says. The sponsoring organization and the names associated with the organization must be reputable as well. Often Lasher recognizes presenters if they have published research studies or have been quoted in journals for their expertise in an area.
Another important criterion for evaluating conferences is whether or not they help you maintain your professional certification, says Mercurio. (To learn how to get the most from a conference, see article above.)
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