This week I have learned that I am too proud.
I received an email from a parent this week, outlining in great detail his recommendations for the treatment of his daughter. At first, I was irritated that he (the parent) would have the audacity to outline for me (the professional) a treatment plan for his daughter. After all, if he wanted to dictate treatment, why didn’t he simply take her home and do it himself?
The reality is, I was being arrogant. His message to me, if I read between the lines of his six-paragraph email, was that I was missing something in the treatment of his daughter. If treatment had been going well, I wouldn’t have received the email in the first place. Once I set my personal insecurities aside, I was able to see that he made some very good points. His recommendations for treatment were actually fairly sophisticated and good ideas.
This is a small example of what I would call “family-driven care”.
Family-driven care is spreading like a wild-fire in residential treatment. The Building Bridges Initiative, founded in 2005, will be having the largest conference in its history in Omaha in June of this year http://www.buildingbridges4youth.org/. The Initiative advocates that families need to be treated less like “problems” and more like “partners” in their own treatment. If I truly believe in this sentiment (and in my own training and philosophical orientation toward treatment) then I will be partnering with parents and children as a matter of practice.
One of my concerns, watching my own mother go through cancer treatments, was the apparent ineptitude of the doctors who sometimes were assigned to her case. Not only that, but their arrogance because they supposedly knew more than I did was also irritating. The truth of the matter was that they were not always right, and she suffered sometimes because of their mistakes. My friend recently went through this with his own mother, who was in the hospital for over a month. Had the doctors listened to him, his mother’s stay could have been reduced by weeks.
So, I need to challenge myself, cast off my pride, and partner with the families who seek my expertise. After all, when I really think about it, the lessons I’ve learned in my career that have had the most impact on the way I perform treatment I learned from my clients anyway!
