Training

List of Training Projects

T1: Monitoring and Prevention of Secondary Medical Complications Using a Peer Mentoring Approach

T2: Improving Clinical Practice Through Consumer-Driven Education: Development of the Consumer Professional Partner Program

T3: Preventing Secondary Conditions to Achieve Healthy Living with SCI: Research Findings & Innovative Training Concepts

T4: Building a Virtual Resource Network on Exercise and Prevention

T1: Monitoring and Prevention of Secondary Medical Complications Using a Peer Mentoring Approach

It can be hard for newly injured individuals with SCI to avoid costly medical complications after discharge from a rehabilitation hospital. One of the major challenges for rehabilitation professionals is to make sure that people with SCI can take care of themselves and take steps to prevent medical complications after they leave the hospital and begin adjusting to their new life with a disability.

This study employs people with SCI as socalled "peer mentors" whose job is to combine their personal experience with SCI with a skill set that focuses on prevention of secondary conditions. This combination prepares them to help newly injured individuals with SCI improve their self care and prevention behaviors after discharge.

We work with up to 10 peer mentors at the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH), and expect to assist 150 newly injured adults with SCI over 3 years to help prevent medical complications, such as pressure sores and urinary tract infections (UTI). Additional individuals with SCI will work as SCI Life Consultants, and together with peer mentors and research and training staff, will develop this peer mentor program.

T2: Improving Clinical Practice through Consumer Driven Education: Development of the Consumer Professional Partner Program

To address the lack of disability specific knowledge and awareness among future health care professionals, this training project will employ consumers with spinal cord injury (SCI) as the educators of physical therapy and medical school students in the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area. People with SCI teach and inform medical and physical therapy students about their firsthand experiences and rehabilitation needs, the importance of physical activity and exercise to prevent health problems such as heart disease and bone loss, and about general disability topics around SCI.

People with SCI are immediately and intimately involved in the design, development, and delivery of the educational content and curriculum. This program, entitled the Consumer Professional Partner Program (CPPP), builds on a consumer as educator program, called the Patient Partner Program, that has been tested in the education of physicians about arthritis. During the development phase, educators and students are both invited to provide feedback about this program in the form of brief interviews. The program will also be offered over the Internet as a self education module.

Healthy Tomorrow (HT), an overarching disability awareness educational program, extends the work of project T2, expanding the notion of professionals beyond the clinical professions that serve persons with disabilities through a balance of treating and teaching to teachers in other, extra-clinical, community venues such as schools.

HT seeks to foster knowledge of disability-related issues in our citizens right from the start by focusing on children in their early, formative years. Initiated in 2006, our pilot efforts with preschoolers work to increase empathetic insight into living with a disability. In HT, individuals with disability (SCI) co-teach children portions of the disability awareness lesson series. They are presented as "heroes" to be admired rather than as persons with disability who are different.

T3: Preventing Secondary Conditions to Achieve Healthy Living with SCI: Research Findings and Innovative Training Concepts

A two day, fully accessible, national conference will be held in the fourth quarter of Year 3, entitled 'Preventing secondary conditions to achieve healthy living with SCI Research findings and innovative training concepts.' At this conference, experiences and preliminary findings from all of the Research and Training Projects will be presented to an audience consisting of clinicians, other health care professionals, researchers, policymakers, advocates, and consumers. Individuals with SCI will present and co-present along side clinical experts and researchers.

T4: Building a Virtual Resource Network on Exercise and Prevention

This training project will establish a comprehensive Virtual Resource Network on Exercise and Prevention through which knowledge gained from RRTC activities can be conveyed to consumers with spinal cord injury (SCI), health professionals, educators, and others. The Internet-based VRNEP is fully accessible and regularly updated with information and resources regarding SCI, secondary conditions, physical activity, and prevention. People with spinal cord injuries are significantly involved in identifying content areas as well as delivery methods.

This on-line network allows for consumer input and feedback through online discussion forums, real time Web casts, and web based user questionnaires. By using this internet approach, the broadest possible access to the RRTC research and training information is provided, and user feedback is maximized.