Can-Change member Dr. Michael Vallis was awarded the Charles H. Best Award by Diabetes Canada in recognition of his work making a significant difference towards improving the quality of life of individuals living with diabetes.
Étiquette : diabetes
Group-based, person-centered diabetes self-management education: healthcare professionals’ implementation of new approaches
In the field of diabetes education, many healthcare professionals favour person-centeredness as a concept, but implementation in practice remains challenging. Programs have often a fixed curriculum dominated by biomedical issues. Person-centeredness in group-based programs requires a change in practice towards addressing biopsychosocial issues and facilitating group processes. The objective of this study, in which Can-Change member Dr. Michael Vallis participated, was to explore how healthcare professionals implement new approaches to facilitate group-based, person-centered diabetes education targeting people with type 2 diabetes.
Comment on Pladevall et al’s 2015 publication in The Diabetes Educator
Comment calling attention to the need for health professionals to be trained in motivational interviewing (MI) due to it being a highly complex clinical skill taking considerable time to learn and master and how health professionals trained in MI also require ongoing training and supervision. Can-Change members Dr. Tavis Campbell, Dr. Simon Bacon, Dr. Kim Corace, Dr. Kim L. Lavoie, and Dr. Michael Vallis contributed to this article.
Establishing a Working Alliance to Achieve Self-Management Support
It has long been accepted within applied psychology that the quality of the client-therapist relationship —termed the working alliance— is of central importance to treatment outcome and may account for a significant degree of the overall treatment effect. This paper examines the role of the working alliance in diabetes care and offers a practical guide to the diabetes healthcare provider in establishing a working alliance with the person with diabetes in managing diabetes. Can-Change member Dr. Michael Vallis contributed to this article.
Psychosocial Intervention for Diabetes Self-Management
The purpose of this research, which included the contributions of Can-Change member Dr. Michael Vallis, is to develop a brief psychosocial intervention protocol for type 2 diabetes self-management and pilot-test its implementation through a 6-session evidence-based psychosocial intervention protocol focusing on the role of behaviour modification, maintenance of motivation and emotion management in type 2 diabetes self-management. This promising intervention could be developed as a training manual to deliver the intervention and fulfill the Canadian Diabetes Association’s clinical guidelines to provide psychosocial interventions as part of diabetes care.