Where to begin? We’d typically start by saying “Happy New Year” - but is it really?
2020 left most of us facing challenges that never could have been anticipated, both personal and professional.
There has been an influx of toxic positivity and demands for productivity indicating that if you haven’t ‘made the best’ of this current pandemic, or if you haven’t learned a new skill or started a new business venture, you must be failing.
I call bullshit.
Some days, just getting out of bed is an accomplishment. Going for a walk and getting fresh air is enough reason to celebrate. Eating a full meal, one that even includes the nutrients that our body craves, deserves a standing ovation.
Sure, many have taken this awful pandemic and made it ‘work’ for them. I have many colleagues and friends who have been incredibly successful in changing their business approach, starting new projects, or picking up new hobbies. Those of us lucky enough to be near family may see that as a silver lining, but at the same time, families are complex and spending too much time together has it’s own slew of challenges.
Progress in any sense is rarely linear. We learn something new and make huge improvements quite quickly, only to plateau, take some time off, and feel as though we need to put even more work than before in to making half the progress we saw initially. Businesses take time to build, boom for a bit, dive when the market changes, and get back up and going when the market changes again. Over and over and over. And has the market ever been changing this last year!
We spent a lot of 2020 binging Netflix, overconsuming, and getting down on ourselves for ‘not making the most of all this time off’.
And I’m afraid to say that 2021 will be much different.
But part of the personal work done on ourselves during that time has been on accepting the fact that this is a sucky time for (mostly) everyone - and that’s ok! We no longer feel bad about sleeping in, about watching movie marathons mid-day, or about lacking the focus needed to start a new project. Because now, more than ever before, we have fully come to realize that every day is a new day, and no single day, week, or year, can define who we are, what we want, or what we’re capable of.
It wasn’t until the second half of the year that we stopped thinking about changes that would be uncomfortable yet necessary, and started doing - often with little confidence, a lot of anxiety, and a bunch of apprehension. But each time we did a bit more, we learned a bit more, and felt a bit better.
We can look back on 2020 and dump ourselves into a bucket of success or failure based on our accomplishments and coping strategies - but why bother? We can look forward into 2021 with hope and see a return to normal as a success, but again - why bother? Why not just appreciate the little wins in day to day life that accumulate to the overarching progress that we make throughout life, regardless of the setbacks we experience during these unprecedented times.
After many conversations with Jenn about my deep desire for things to return to ‘normal’, I now realize that that’s not actually what I want at all. I was craving the familiarity of my professional work life, even though I was craving drastic changes to that very life while it was my daily reality.
As I mentioned in my early blog on my professional journey, I have felt a need for change for quite a long time.
Typically, I would be travelling all over the globe to conduct seminars, workshops, and individual assessments, and to speak at conferences and events. And after 30 years of doing that, I have felt that minimal change, or at least not enough to make a true difference from a clinical perspective, has happened. I would much prefer to work solely with clients, and to have meaningful relationships with clinicians who share a passion for postural care ( you know who you are!!) rather than just seeing it as a job (as many do, which breaks my heart).
We have exciting changes coming this year. Amongst those changes are sure to be many set backs, upsets, and Netflix binges - but once we stopped thinking and talking about the ‘what if’s’ and started doing what was needed to make ourselves feel as though our purpose was not lost, so many opportunities have arisen.
Better yet, these changes and opportunities are undoubtedly going to change the field of postural care for the better.
Like the post-graduate certificate in posture, seating and wheelchair service provision that will be starting at the end of this month at the University of Limerick.
Many of you in this industry are undoubtedly familiar with Rosie Gowran, and likely know her for her work in research and policy related to wheelchair and seating service provision. Jenn has had the incredible pleasure of working under Rosie as a research assistant for the past year, and this certificate program is a product of their work together, fueled by years of research and progress in the field led by Dr. Gowran.
Lucky for me, they’ve brought me on as a consultant for the developing stages and as a lecturer for the practical components to cover the topics that I hold so near and dear to my heart.
This is a dream for me.
Sure, I love to connect with the audiences I speak with when presenting in my usual way, but I have always craved more longevity in those relationships and more follow through with the content and skills I hope to help foster. While it is absolutely wonderful to hear that clinicians attending my seminars and workshops leave feeling inspired and enlightened, I feel like that’s often where it ends. Full day seminars, half day work shops, and multi-day events simply aren’t enough to bridge the gap in education that all of us have from not receiving the necessary training in seating, postural care, and wheelchair service provision while in university.
So here we are, with a certificate program at a well recognized university, and students engaging part-time over one full academic year. And even more exciting is the fact that this program is sustainable and will more than likely be held annually.
This is such a big deal that funding was granted to pay for the first cohort of 20 students - which had to be increased from the initial limit of 10 due to having over 100 applicants! This excites me for so many reasons, and most of all I think it excites me because it shows that this is needed - that people care - and that there is a hunger for more knowledge and skills that will better allow us to serve our clients in the best way possible.
Another massive project we’ve begun has been our virtual mentorship programme.
Last autumn, while Jenn was doing research on wheelchair and seating education programs, she came across an article showing that virtual mentorship could be an effective way to increase clinical knowledge. Since our face to face clinics were not operating, and seminars were not taking place due to the pandemic, she felt that a virtual programme for local clinicians might be a good way to continue to provide education related to this population who so badly needs our services, while also creating a deeper professional relationship with those clinicians that we so often only see infrequently and in group settings.
Within a week, she had a business proposition written out and we sent it off to the local suppliers and manufacturers that we frequently work with to see if they would be willing to sponsor clinicians to take part in our first mentee group in lieu of our traditional in-person training.
Without hesitation, HC21 jumped at the opportunity to support this idea and we were given a list of clinicians to begin our ten week mentorship program with.
This programme was initially designed to involve individual weekly Zoom meetings with each mentee with specific goals and action items to be completed between sessions. However, as restrictions lifted for a brief period, and as each clinician became more engaged with the content, we were able to rearrange many sessions to accommodate virtual assessments with their service users or even in-person assessments when we were in the same city!
And let me tell you something - these clinicians are incredible.
I honestly didn’t think I would enjoy this programme (Zoom is not my cup of tea!). But the frequency of interactions and being able to actually experience each mentee’s growth and excitement at each step is exactly what I had been missing with the type of work I used to do.
They come to each session with questions - and I mean fantastic questions, ones that are well thought out and demonstrate their improved knowledge and decision making skills. We’re about to wrap up our first ten weeks and have a new group (also graciousky sponsored by HC21!) starting in February. We plan on writing more about this experience and opportunity in a future blog, and will hopefully convince some of our mentees to participate in writing a blog :)
So, this year, I say so-long to traditional seminars and travelling outside of Ireland. If I could go the rest of my professional career without presenting a traditional seminar, I most likely would. Now that I’m starting to see that there are other, more engaging and impactful options out there, that’s exactly what I plan to do.
Rather than inspire and enlighten, I want this year to be about making an impact and driving change.