Ep. 3: Inspiring Innovation in Oncology Massage: The Preferred Practitioner Grant Program

[00:00:00] Ericka Clinton (2): good day everyone. Welcome to another episode my name is Erica Clinton and I will be your host today. Joining us are two amazing individuals who have both served on the S four oh M Board of Directors, Gail McDonald and Stacy Barden to tell us about the S four oh M Preferred Practitioner Grant program.

[00:00:23] Thank you both for joining us today.

[00:00:25] Stacy Barden: Thank

[00:00:26] Gayle MacDonald: Happy. Happy to be here.

[00:00:27] Ericka Clinton (2): Wonderful. So why don’t you explain to our listeners. What the S four oh M Preferred Practitioner Grant program is?

[00:00:38] Gayle MacDonald: Stacy and I have, had a dream for, many years to do something like this. I wanna do it personally to support our members. This program is for people who are preferred practitioners, and I would guess that many of us over the years have had a dream about starting, a pro, a community project that offers massage to people who perhaps can’t afford it. I’ve, I had a dream for a while, which now I’m mostly retired, but I wanted to do what’s called a case series with bone marrow transplant patients. I was really curious how would massage affect their bone marrow, the actual receiving of their cells on the day. So that’s an example of a case study, and I can imagine that a lot of people have ideas that they just needed a little funding to help them to just to, to inspire them and to initiate some action to actually do this.

[00:01:41] So, I don’t know, Stacy, what, what your personal, uh, inspiration was for this, but for me it was, for our members to support our members.

[00:01:50] Stacy Barden: It was multifaceted. As you know, when I had my clinic, um, I had a pay it forward program where I asked my clients to help pay for massages for my cancer patients, and they were more than generous. On many occasions and many clients received free or reduced rate massages because of the money that was kept in a separate account for them to utilize.

[00:02:16] when you called me and said, Hey, would you wanna work on this one too? I went, you betcha. I do. I just love the idea that by offering this program, our preferred practitioners can step into. An arena of providing free massages by doing some sort of educational program. By doing a case study, they can expand their own personal horizons and their skillsets, and they get to share it with the greater group, which it’s an amazing opportunity for any one of us to to do so.

[00:02:50] Yeah, that’s part of why I’m so excited about it.

[00:02:53] Ericka Clinton (2): Well, that sounds wonderful. So this is a new benefit for preferred practitioners who are in the community of S four oh M. And if I understand this right, they will be given funding and. To support various endeavors, like providing massage therapy, doing some kind of, uh, research maybe in the form of a case study or case series.

[00:03:18] are there any other opportunities? Uh, Stacy, you said, creating an educational program, That could be, providing clients or of oncology massage education on various ways of self-care or managing their condition using massage, things like

[00:03:34] Gayle MacDonald: Um,

[00:03:35] Stacy Barden: Yeah, I would say presenting to a local cancer group, providing us with a video or podcast that then goes into our archives and becomes part of a learning process for all of us.

[00:03:47] Ericka Clinton (2): Wonderful. So education for the public

[00:03:49] Gayle MacDonald: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:50] It could be for the public, it could be for us as practitioners. It could be for a patient or client groups, or it could be for allied healthcare practitioners.

[00:04:01] Ericka Clinton (2): That’s amazing. So talk to me about the funding. How much are these grants?

[00:04:06] Gayle MacDonald: There’s gonna be seven seven grants. Three of them will be for $1,000, and four of them will be for $500. And we, we have not specified that, oh, the thousand dollars grants are gonna be for massage and the 500 for, for this. We’re, we, we’re gonna try it this way, this first cycle and, you know, things will change.

[00:04:29] It’s the first time around for this.

[00:04:31] Ericka Clinton (2): that’s good. So it’s, it’s a work in progress clearly. but you have, these thousand dollars and $500 grants that’ll be given out, and a lot of it will just depend on the projects that get chosen, I’m

[00:04:44] Gayle MacDonald: Ex exactly. For instance, an education, creating an educational project, may not be, take as much time actually as doing sort of a longer term community service project, giving massage, you know, to a specific group of people. So that will be part of, uh, what we base, what the review team bases, you know, its selection on, uh, when they’re looking at the, the, uh, applications that people submit.

[00:05:11] Ericka Clinton (2): Okay, so let’s get to that. So people have to submit an application, and tell us a little bit about that process, when they’ll get the application or how they can find the application, and what it entails.

[00:05:25] Gayle MacDonald: The God’s willing. Monday the 10th we will blast out our, our third email about this, and we, we’ve been teasing people a little bit or kind of holding the carrot up. It’s like, it’s coming, well, it will be out on July the 10th, and there will be, there will be a hyperlink that people can actually download the application off of that email. It will be posted on the S four oh wham.org website. It will be posted on the Facebook page. The regional champions will blast it out to the people in their state. So there’ll be lots of ways to access this application. And so we’re trying to give people plenty of times, a couple of months to actually, get their idea, in form and fill out the application.

[00:06:13] So then the, the due date will be September the 10th. And then we will, uh, the review team will, take its time. It’s all, we’re a volunteer organization, so we don’t want this pressure full. So we’ll, we’ll take a good two months to review the applications that come in.

[00:06:30] Ericka Clinton (2): Wonderful. And then people will complete that application. Obviously they’ll have to give some kind of description of their project. and they’ll submit that to

[00:06:41] Gayle MacDonald: Grants S four org.

[00:06:45] Ericka Clinton (2): and they’ll do that by September 10th. And then the review team will review the application, make a decision, and notify the, winners or the recipients, let’s say. Because I think we’re all winners at some point doing this work. Um, we’ll let the recipients know

[00:07:02] november 10th, that they’ve been selected and how much of a grant they have or will receive.

[00:07:09] So for the people who, let’s say, provide massage therapy, using their grants, is there an expectation that they will collect? Some kind of data from the people that they, treat or gather some kind of information about the efficacy of the work that they’re doing.

[00:07:28] Stacy Barden: we’ve created, the S four M preferred practitioner clinical re report packet.

[00:07:34] Ericka Clinton (2): Ooh.

[00:07:35] Stacy Barden: Um, we decided that it needs to be a whole big packet because we’re going to provide the initial intake form. addition to that, there will also be a tips page that will help guide them through how to do what when they’re doing the massage part of the program.

[00:07:51] such as, we don’t wanna know the client’s name, we don’t wanna know too much data about them. We want the clinical data, not the personal data. So there’ll be a separate page for the therapist to keep, but they will be giving each client an identifier. And that’s up to the, the client’s and the practitioner’s decision making.

[00:08:10] additionally then we’ll have a session intake so that every session thereafter when they get a massage that records any changes in their treatment, in their medical condition and their overall health condition. And then we’ll have a session soap note form that needs to be filled out so that we know what they did and they’re not limited.

[00:08:32] In the type of session that they create. We want people to use all their skills that they have and let us know what their skills are. and then there will also be the measuring scale where we’ve created a scale with the smiley faces and verbiage so that before the massage, after the massage and post, we’ll be collecting data to see

[00:08:54] how the massage affected various different criteria such as pain, fatigue, sleep, their mood, those kind of things.

[00:09:01] all that information comes to us and we put a few people to work to, can condense it all into a nice little report.

[00:09:07] Ericka Clinton (2): That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. That clearly also gives the organization an opportunity to do more with that, after we get this initial data, which would be really, really exciting. so after people do their projects of various sorts, For the folks doing massages, obviously the data collected from, those opportunities.

[00:09:29] We’ll come back to S four o m. Will the other, grant recipients, uh, projects be presented and available to the S four M community in the greater community?

[00:09:39] Stacy Barden: Yes, and that’s actually part of the whole application process is that when you apply for this grant, you are under the, you have to sign off on the understanding that some of this information will become part of S four M’S. Archives. It will become available on our website at the summit. And we’re even thinking of various ways at the summit that it can be presented.

[00:10:02] Maybe a breakout session, maybe it’ll be, you know, a whole session. It’s, it’s one of those things where we’re still leaving that wide open cuz we’re really counting on some of our preferred practitioners to go, I got this and I know how to think big.

[00:10:18] Ericka Clinton (2): Well, that sounds wonderful and it sounds like a very rich opportunity. For our practitioners to continue to do their work with support, um, maybe tackle something they’ve been interested in or thinking about doing, but wouldn’t be able to on their own, commit their own time, um, for that project. Um, and I love the fact that the community will get to hear about it, benefit from it, and of course, hopefully generate more ideas.

[00:10:49] Of things to do for the second coming of this grant program, which I am assuming we’re gonna continue to do as regularly as possible.

[00:10:58] Gayle MacDonald: Fingers crossed.

[00:11:00] Ericka Clinton (2): Okay?

[00:11:00] Gayle MacDonald: it will be a two year cycle. And so, so the awardees will have 18 months to complete their project. And then we will, you know, start again with new application process.

[00:11:12] Stacy Barden: One of the points I wanted to make was, while we’re creating all of this, we realized that there may be room for failure to take place. And failure is a learning lesson that we all need to remember. Don’t give up. think big. Let your imagination go. Be as creative as possible.

[00:11:28] And if somewhere along the line it derails and goes a different direction, that’s still a win.

[00:11:33] we’ve all been there and we need to remember that’s still a learning opportunity for all of us.

[00:11:38] Ericka Clinton (2): There’s definitely value in all of those lessons. and I’m just really excited to see what people are gonna come up with or even be emboldened and inspired, to do now that they have this opportunity. And just one, I guess other question, if. During the application process, people have questions.

[00:11:58] They’ve kind of hit a roadblock with the application, or they’re not sure which direction to go. Can they reach out for advisement about the process and how to complete their application?

[00:12:08] Gayle MacDonald: Yeah, , we’ve set up a special email address for [email protected] and Stacy’s gonna. And a woman that, email address, because we both know, or Erica knows how bad I am at going to teams to check these things out and, but Stacy is very good at these. So yes, but, but. Stacy and I will be happy to answer questions that come in.

[00:12:35] And so people might want to, um, get their application in a little bit before the deadline date of September the 10th, so that if they have a question or if they, they submit their grant application and we want, we have a question that there’s still time for us to get back to them before the deadline date.

[00:12:56] Ericka Clinton (2): Wonderful. So a lot of support and a little bit of mentorship in this process as well,

[00:13:01] so. Well, this sounds wonderful. I am really glad that you were both inspired to bring this project forward and that S four oh M could boldly participate in the support of their preferred practitioners, to do these projects.

[00:13:17] And Im really looking forward to seeing what people end up doing, as well. So thank you both so much for your time, for all of that information. I know this will help people as they start to think about whether or not they wanna partake. And just another question, is this something that like a, like a group could do, like a massage group, a number of practitioners or some people who might be in practice together could get together and do as a collective?

[00:13:45] Gayle MacDonald: Why not,

[00:13:46] Stacy Barden: I, I agree with Gail. Why not? It’s the, at this point, again, put your creative hat on and let your juices flow and come up with what will work, and give it a, give it a go. you know, there’s only a mountain to climb, and the other side is always the fun part.

[00:14:04] Gayle MacDonald: Yeah, so Erica, this is like, uh, like I hope that all of our, preferred practitioners will think about this, people that work in hospital, people who work in clinics, people who have private practice, so that everybody. Thinks about this, there is something that we can all do no matter, you know, what our, uh, venue is.

[00:14:25] Ericka Clinton (2): That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful, and also provides an amazing opportunity. So preferred practitioners, keep watching your emails. Monday, July 10th, you’ll get that next email blast with the ability to download and start filling out that application. We really hope that many of you apply for these grants and again, if you have any questions, Gail and Stacy are available to help and support you.

[00:14:52] Thank you guys so much for your time and all of that information. We really appreciate it we will see you all at our next podcast and thank you so much.

[00:15:01] Stacy Barden: Thank you.