ladysprite | Too Much Continuing, Not Enough Education

So as I may have mentioned once or twice here, I'm currently taking part in a Hospice Certification Program. Year and a half, couple hundred hours, gets me a handful of extra letters after my name and teaches me a ton of cool stuff.

I'm nearing the end of the first of four units, and so far it's been almost completely amazing. This part is a series of online lectures, with quizzes after each section and mandatory group forum chats and essays and homework, on the basics and fundamentals of hospice care.

It's been incredibly useful, both in reassuring me that so far I'm practicing with good standards of care and in giving me tools I can use to make my practice even better. The lectures are usually anywhere from half an hour to an hour long, and they've covered everything from definitions of hospice to laws and practices regarding body care to explaining to clients the concept of patient-directed care, and I swear there's been at least one thing in each and every session that's been directly applicable to my day-to-day work.

And now I'm on the lecture about Compassion Fatigue in Caregivers. Which sounds incredibly useful and relevant and helpful and important, right?

You'd think.

Except it's almost four hours long. And it is almost entirely comprised of the lecturer alternating between rambling about herself and humble-bragging about how of course, while we're supposed to take care of ourselves and not overwork, we all know how hard it is, and she *totally* doesn't practice what she preaches and just works so hard.

Out of curiosity and boredom, I actually watched the timer in the last section of the lecture to see how much time she spent talking about the subject matter versus talking about herself. In an 18 minute lecture, precisely 4 minutes and 32 seconds were spent *not* talking about her life.

I have learned absolutely nothing about compassion fatigue. I have, however, learned about her hobbies (quilting and bicycling - but not long distance, only maybe 30-40 miles at a time; her husband prefers 50 mile trips), her food preferences (she hates cooking, but will eat peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon), the angst she felt moving away from home to go to college and how frequently she called her parents her freshman year, her divorce, how much credit card debt she accumulated in her first five years in practice, her decision to go to her first swing dance class (a desire to challenge herself, because she has a fear of trying new things), her initial hatred of sewing and how she parlayed that into said quilting hobby......

I still have an hour plus of this lecture to go. If I didn't have the prospect of a quiz and forum conversation at the end, I'd be so tempted to just hit 'play' and let my cats watch it instead of me.

At least I know I'll get the question about her preferred sandwich spread right.