Professional and lay facilitator's perceptions of roles, goals, and strategies to promote social support and self-management in face-to-face support groups for adults with multiple sclerosis and myotonic muscular dystrophy

Chronic health conditions are on the rise and increase approximately 1% each year in the United States. Though this crisis can be cost prohibitive, there are economical treatment options available. One option is support groups for adults with chronic health conditions. Research has shown that social support experienced by group participants improves coping skills, lowers depression, and enhances quality of life. Another option for chronically ill people to help themselves is by participating in patient self- management programs. Patients taught self-management skills have improved their health status, made fewer physician visits, and have reduced hospital stays compared to control subjects. Unfortunately, these patient programs are often short-lived and limited to hospital settings.;The role of the facilitator is critical to the success of a support group achieving the goals of either social support or self-management. There is little research about support group facilitators promoting both goals of social support and self-management. The purpose of this study was to survey support group facilitators to determine their roles and strategies used to achieve the goals of social support and self-management behaviors. Transformative learning theory and goal-setting theory provided the theoretical underpinning for a conceptual model of support group facilitation.;A researcher-designed survey was used to gather descriptive data. Over 300 facilitators of support groups for adults with Multiple Sclerosis or Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy participated in the survey. Additionally, data were used to compare the strategies used by professionally-trained facilitators to strategies used by lay and peer facilitators.;Survey results revealed statistically significant differences in attitudes toward goal-setting; both professional and professional-peer facilitators responded more favorably to goal-setting. Peers and professionals differed on role perceptions as well as the strategies used to promote self-management health behaviors. Overall, facilitators chose to handle self-management topics with group conversation and made limited use of other collaborative strategies such as demonstration and participatory activities.