Your Health
News and advice from Hull Teaching Primary Care Trust

Living with a long-term health condition?

You can live the life you want.

For people living with a long-term condition, every day can sometimes feel like a struggle. Coping with pain and extreme tiredness, depression and lack of self-confidence are all familiar challenges for sufferers. But a growing number of people in the Hull area are now able to take control of their condition by becoming an 'Expert Patient'. The Expert Patients Programme is a free, six-week course led by people who are also living with a long-term health condition. The course allows people to take more control over their health by understanding and managing their specific condition, which in turn will lead to an improved quality of life.

The course programme offers participants skills to:

• Manage their symptoms
• Deal with stress, depression and low self-image
• Manage pain
• Develop coping skills
• Relax
• Eat healthily
• Work more closely with those caring for them

By sharing skills and experiences with others dealing with similar situations, course participants learn to focus on what they can do rather than what they can't.

Expert patients...

• Feel confident and more in control of their lives
• Aim to manage their condition and its treatment in partnership with healthcare professionals
• Are realistic about the impact of their condition on themselves and their family
• Use their skills and knowledge to improve their quality of life

Christine's story Christine Mason - volunteer tutor Christine Mason, from West Hull, is one person who has benefited enormously from the Expert Patients Programme. She said: "I have been suffering from ME for the past five-and-a-half years and the illness really was quite debilitating. I took part in the Expert Patients Programme, but unfortunately was too ill to complete the course the first time round." But undeterred, Christine enrolled again and finally completed the course in 2005. "The course enabled me to regain my confidence and made me realise that I was not going to let my condition dictate my life. I decided to go on and train as a volunteer tutor for the programme and now I am busy delivering the classes myself. Being a tutor gives me a great sense of achievement and I love being able to help others who are in the same desperate situation that I myself was in. I would encourage anyone who has a long-term health condition to come on the course – it really can change their life."