Endocrine Abstracts

Not everyone who has the capacity to make positive choices about their lifestyle to care for their health is either ready or willing to make these choices. This lack of interest is frustrating for both family members and healthcare professionals. Many young people living with diabetes understand why caring for diabetes is important but do not see it as a priority and do not have the confidence to put different behaviours into practice. Confidence to change requires the young person to be ready to change, to want to change and to be equipped with a range of skills, resources, and abilities. An initial reaction of health care professionals is to ‘educate, educate, educate’ by telling people what they need to know and what they need to do. For a significant percentage of our clients however knowing more, knowing how and knowing why does not result in a change in behaviour. Taking a coaching stance with young people invites them to think about what changes they might want to make, when they would want to make them and how they could make them. A coaching stance that incorporates Motivational Interviewing, Solution focussed and Narrative techniques can helping young people explore and resolve ambivalence about behaviour change(1). It requires health care professionals to be thoughtful and skillful and aims to elicit internal motivation to change which can then be used as a prelude to treatment and/or integrated with other treatment approaches. A coaching stance works with ambivalence and resistance that are often particularly challenging to clinicians working with adolescents.

Reference

1. Christie, D. (2008). Dancing with diabetes: brief therapy conversations with children, young people and families living with diabetes. European Diabetes Nursing 5(1), 28-32