Individuality
written by Tera Hornbeck
As our group sprinted through another week of interprofessional integrative (IE) collaboration, project progress remains in sight. We strategically continued gathering information from identified key stakeholders’ personal experiences, reviewing literature, and individual team member idea sharing. As I reflect on our week, I want to highlight one characteristic that stood out to me, individuality. The IE is to focus on learning from and with each other as we work to divide and conquer and develop the most forward thinking innovative solution to impact our current statewide opioid epidemic.
Ongoing through this semester we continue to learn many interesting opioid addiction facts from listening to stakeholders as they describe Indiana’s current opioid epidemic. An opioid overdose outbreak recently classified by our President as a national emergency. Jim McClelland, our Indian “drug czar” shared knowledge of various community resources available throughout individual communities statewide. He expressed how all community resources continue to try and impact the Indiana opioid epidemic, but find it difficult due to almost all available resources not connecting. The question he left all IE students to ponder was, how might we find a solution aligning all available community resources in a selected community encompassing the continuum of care in an attempt to prevent substance abuse from occurring?
This week two key stakeholders shared their personal experiences assisting addicts through recovery. A Nurse Practitioner (NP) currently working at Fairbanks treatment center shared various experiences working with healthcare providers treating addicts and addicts receiving treatment for addiction. Mary described how addicts lie and often will do anything to obtain drugs when suffering addiction. She also described how addicts often demand certain treatments for addiction. She shared how there are various problems to consider when reviewing addicts and substance abuse prevention and treatment interventions including:
· Ethical issues surrounding the implemented treatment interventions
· Reviewed various recovery treatment options.
· Expressed how costly and difficult obtaining treatment can be for individual addicts.
· Shared how some providers try to profit by treating addicts with specific medication assistive treatments.
The sister to a recovering addict, shared her life story of sacrifices made throughout her life in an attempt to help her older brother stop his abuse of illicit drugs. She reflected and shared multiple heartbreaking memories of her and her brother living through addiction including the following:
· Flunking out of college while trying to help her brother recover
· Her own mother’s denial and refusal to acknowledge her brother’s continued drug addiction
· Unknowingly being a bystander to one of her brother’s drug deals
· Witnessing her brother overdose on drugs and almost die
· Witnessing her father attempt to show her brother tough love
· Expressing her constant fear of her brother relapsing
All stakeholders shared their reflections involving their personal interviewing, treating, counseling, and assisting addicts through recovery after relapse experiences. No one story we heard was the same. Stakeholders shared similar characteristics between addicts. These characteristics were as follows:
· Addicts all use a drug and or alcohol substance regularly
· Addicted individuals suffering from substance abuse disorder will do almost anything to reach their next high even if it may cause them to lose their life
· Rock bottom, treatment, recovery, and relapse all look different for each addict
In our individual IE group last week we completed the following:
· Parent surveys
· Interviews with our children and or grandchildren currently in Elementary school
· Summarized key points from all of our literature in an attempt to work to develop our official problem statement
· Completed individual idea development using the “How Might We” Simplex process methodology
· Expanded our idea development using the “How Might We” Simplex process methodology using a unique user, need, and insight worksheet
· Reviewed and discussed the commonalities of lean methodology and simplex methodology
· Expressed personal technological experience and needs
· Expressed specific professional needs with regards to our student discipline
· Expressed personal childbirth and parenting experiences
· Shared childbirth delivery experiences
· Shared diet needs met by breastfeeding
· Diet needs and practices of our Pet
· How eating different things may improve our brain functioning and our skin
We worked together while consuming healthy snacks and working through a well-plotted agenda developed and provided by our team coordinator Maria. Myself, the recorder reviewed Maria’s notes, my notes, and captured photos of our weekly face to face progress. Pat, our checker, made sure we stayed on task. Delaney and Jessica, monitored our group efforts assuring we had a clear understanding of our current work and what we needed to complete next. As a team we openly shared our project ideas, personal life experiences feeling unjudged and safe. Our project continues to come together. We left our meeting with our assignments and chatted frequently this week coordinating a meeting time for the upcoming week that works for everyone.
As a healthcare staff member working to develop tools to aid an individual to prevent, treat, overcome relapse, and maintain recovery from addiction to various substances. I examined experiences shared by stakeholders. I reviewed words, ideas, and education plans found written in various pieces of literature. I even had the pleasure of hearing words this week directly from an individual who overcame his battle with substance abuse which makes the conscious decision to remain in recovery daily. Sugar Ray Leonard spoke enthusiastically to all his listeners explaining and reassuring that anyone can overcome any obstacle once they put their mind to it.
All my life experiences as a child, wife, mother, student, nurse, and spectator have forced me to examine my perspective on life, evaluate broken systems throughout our world, broken systems impacting our lives. Examining my perspective has led me to believe it is imperative to identify each human being in this world as an individual, not as a disease, a labeled population, and not by the majority of a specified population. Everyone needs a personal education and or treatment plan. Everyone needs to identify and write the goals they wish to achieve in their own life. A personal blueprint then should be designed to achieve their identified goals to make their dreams a reality. Personalized teaching plans and or plans of care should exist for every human, starting in early childhood and continue throughout adulthood.
Once educational and or care needs are identified for an individual, a plan should be written including goals and interventions to achieve optimal outcomes. The plan personal plan needs to travel with the individual to allow needed modifications to be made as needed by teachers, caretakers, and or providers. The individualized plan of care must always meet the needs of the individual[ for it to be both achievable and successful.
As a team of individuals attempting to design a solution to assist others in making healthy choices in life no matter what potential life-altering obstacle one is faced with. I feel it is our responsibility, our duty to learn what each human being values in life. Verify things and or individuals who exist or have existed in their lives providing them with hope and support? Provide safe environments allowing individuals to feel safe to share traumatic life events they may have experienced in the past in hopes to allow them to heal and recover. Ask individuals to share their unique talents and or skills with you? Commend all efforts they share with you even if only making small gains or possibly experiencing small setbacks. Leave all people you come into contact with the understanding that their life does matter, regardless of what others might have said or might say to them. Let individuals you meet, work alongside, mentor or raise know they are unique in their way and can make a difference in this world. It is important to express to everyone in this world including both children and adults that it is possible for anyone to make their dream a reality. As a leader, I plan to embrace the words written below. Moving forward I also plan to teach, mentor, and treat people individually emphasizing the following:
“It may take power to overcome obstacles. Sometimes success takes painful sacrifice. Determination gives you the mental edge needed to dig deep and activate your reserve. You must have high self-esteem. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. One must not fear failure and take risks. The taken risk potentially causing failure is a part of one’s success. Accomplishing is finishing what you set out to do. Victory is when you accomplished what you set out to do. And always remember to keep those guards up”. -Sugar Ray Leonard
My learnings this week encompassed so many things including:
· Appreciation for all unique characteristics and individual talents my teammates continuously share
· How one or two students should probably not park in the Heron School of Art and Design parking lot without a pass and be thankful for warnings
· Knowledge sharing of various teaching tools to assist with the understanding of Simplex process by various disciplines
· Sharing of developed Simplex Methodology step by step tools may allow various disciplines to use this methodology in their specialties when working on process improvement projects
· Identification of the similarities and difference between Lean Methodologies and Simplex Methodologies
· Similarities within all problem statement development from various disciplines
· Two of us are left-handed, and three of us are right-handed
· Timed Agendas assist with completing tasks and staying focused
· Action plans keep projects moving forward
· Teams should always take time to celebrate small gains
· Always listen to individuals you come in contact with you never know what tools they will arm or motivate you with
· Always be aware of your surroundings you may find a process or practice you can apply to your project at home or your place of employment
