Heathcare Provider Information

-Becky Curtis

Take Courage Coaching partners with healthcare providers, coaching their chronic pain patients to better health and pain management. The result is a patient who makes choices which reduce the experience of pain, relies less on medications, and has fewer hospital visits. Coached patients learn self-management skills, stay more active, and return to or stay at work.

As a caregiver, what can you do when your chronic pain patients...

• Want relief from their pain, but lose motivation?
• Want to stop hurting, but don't follow pain management regiments?
• Complain that pain controls their lives, but don't choose lifestyle practices that help?

Under the vision and leadership of Becky Curtis,
Take Courage Coaching (TCC) provides solutions
to these concerns.

Get help for your patients

Payers like to see patients get better, return to work, and decrease utilization of services and medications. Your recommendation for coaching gives your patients a chance to live more effectively with chronic pain and to experience less negativity and isolation. TCC conducts initial and periodic assessments to measure the patient's progress and compliance. Reports are sent to
physicians and insurers.

How Coaching Works

Patients who display readiness for learning and utilizing coping skills can be coached through the process of self-management, healthy lifestyle choices, increased function, and goal setting.

Education and goal setting include these topics:

• Goal setting and monitoring progress
• Sleep
• Exercise (cardio, strength, stretching)
• Pacing
• Relaxation—body and mind
• Nutrition—healthy choices
• Medication safety
• Optimism
• Communication
• Social/assertiveness skills
• Occupational/vocational exploration
• SAW/RTW

Becky's Story

In the summer of 2005 a violent rollover car accident in the remote Big Hole Valley of Montana caused a C4 spinal cord injury that almost took my life--TWICE.

First, I faced a fight to stay alive. After recovering from my physical injuries, I faced a second battle: excruciating, unbearable burning, aching nerve pain. My quality of life threatened to disappear forever. My chronic central pain reached its peak two years later. An MRI revealed I'd developed a cyst called a syrinx in the center of my spinal cord. It was Inoperable. My only option was to trial different kinds of pain medications. My doctors worked hard to help me find a solution.

The usual nerve pain medications did little if anything to actually give relief. Narcotics didn't even touch my pain; they just made it harder to cope. I felt trapped in my body and desperately wanted out. Fortunately, my faith stayed with me and I took the courage to move forward with life and look for solutions.

It was then that I discovered something that set me free from the tyranny of pain. I can't say I'm pain free, but I'm free from painís control over me and my life.

I founded TCC to share what I've learned with others, who like me, face unending, incurable pain. Welcome to the Journey.

CONTACT TAKE COURAGE COACHING

Phone:	406/586-0540
Fax:	406/586-0541
Email:	becky@takecouragecoaching.com
Address:	3648 Academy Drive Bozeman, MT 59715