- clearly written and without medical jargon
- full of graphics and not too much text
- masses of practical tips that can be applied in daily life
- providing answers to questions YOU want to raise
Oh, I almost forgot: all this has been designed and set to music by an enthusiastic doctor assisted by specialists in each of the medical areas mentioned. If you’d like to know more about My Medicoach, just follow the Guide!
A CONFESSION TO MAKE ….
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dr Jean-Edouard Stevens and I am a doctor in medicine. I have a confession to make – for a medical doctor I talk too much. Far too much.
Let me explain
OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY “AH”
When I started my career as a GP, I was very keen on the idea of being able to spend a lot of time giving advice to my patients. I wanted them to feel better so that they wouldn’t fall ill so often, or at least know what to do when faced with minor problems, or even serious ones. I used to tell mothers with children how to spot the difference between a virus and bacteria. I used to chat to people with depression about the beneficial effects of sports activities on their brain functions and on how natural anti-depressants and endorphins are produced. I used to advise my patients with back pain on exercises they could do at home to restore and keep their backs in good shape….
To sum up, I was spending (pretty well) hours with each patient, doing all that for the price of a normal consultation. It took some time for me to realise I had to choose between eating buttered pasta all my life or finding a job more in keeping with what I wanted to do.
BY THE WAY, ARE YOU SURE THAT YOUR WORK STATION IS PROPERLY SET UP?
I decided then to specialise in workplace healthcare, as an awful lot of it has to do with prevention. Fantastic! Finally I could earn a living doing what made me feel truly alive and useful. A real luxury… But little by little, I began to feel the boundaries closing in here too. First of all, I was only able to see a limited number of workers every year. Then, I so often found myself saying the same things over and over again, without any real support to help my patients understand how to manage their own health afterwards. That’s when I got the idea of creating My Medicoach.
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS “MY MEDICOACH”?
Our objectives: to give everyone the means of not only understanding but also learning what to do in our everyday lives to bring about change.
GRAPHICS, A GAME AND AN APP
To enable you to take practical steps to alleviate your back pain, My Medicoach offers three angles of attack:
- Understanding, thanks to our animated videos: I’ve always been convinced that a small drawing was worth a lengthy speech. That’s why, rather than churn out long indigestible texts I preferred to use tiny animated videos to help you understand the causes and consequences of back pain.
- Learning, thanks to our game: in order to move from passive knowledge (knowing what happens) to active knowledge (knowing what to do), you have to learn the correct movements and correct habits. Using a game is the oldest, and still the most effective, way of learning. That’s why on My Medicoach you will soon see our grand online interactive game about back pain.
- Acting every day, thanks to our app: I know from personal experience that genuine change happens through introducing new habits into our daily lives. We have all found out how difficult it is to stay motivated over long periods of time. That’s why you will soon find on My Medicoach an app full of short exercises for stretching and strengthening back muscles. In fact the medical community has known for ages that these exercises, if done every day, will lead to tangible results and will make life more comfortable. So to increase your motivation, the app will also make it possible for you to share your progress with a community of users. So why don’t we all take action together and transform our lives!
All the above is backed up by sound scientific advice: every one of the elements presented on the website and the app too has been designed with the help, support and constructive criticism of professors, doctors and health professionals. If you are interested, just follow the guide …..
SO IS ALL THIS INFO FOR FREE?
In just one word: YES!
Knowledge brings freedom. And in order to bring freedom it must itself stay free.
Our aim is that this knowledge should be of benefit to the widest possible public so that every individual may profit from it and improve his or her daily life.
YES, BUT AT SOME POINT IT’S STILL GOING TO COST MONEY
Of course, but we are looking for sponsors, organisations and institutions that will be ready to finance this new way of preventative action. It will be thanks to their involvement that this website will exist and grow.
THEN WHAT?
First of all, we plan to create new animated videos and to develop an app, accessible via the website or downloadable to your tablet or smartphone, which will help you change your daily routines. Then we’ll launch the first major interactive online game on the subject of back pain.
Then what? We will gradually increase the number of pathologies dealt with on the website, always starting from the same idea: prevention is always more effective, less painful and less expensive than cure!
SUPPOSING I WANT TO TAKE PART IN YOUR PROGRAMME ?
Your help will be more than welcome!
- Spread the word about My Medicoach to everybody you meet: send an email to your friends, and share the animated videos and the games on your social networks. You can help us to expand!
- Make a donation: small streams make big rivers, as the saying goes. So if you want to make a positive contribution to combating back pain, log on to our secure donation page.
FAQ
WHY MAKE A WEBSITE ABOUT BACK PAIN?
Back pain is only the first stage of the planned route of My Medicoach. We decided to get interested in this subject because back pain has huge consequences on the comfort of daily life. But all the scientific research studies demonstrate that in order to fight back pain you need to be able to rely on the following:
- information that is both reassuring and easy to understand
- stretching and strengthening exercises
- improved ergonomy: posture, movements and adjusting the surroundings
IS BACK PAIN REALLY THAT IMPORTANT IN OUR SOCIETY?
To give you an idea of the size of the problem, here are some statistics:
- back pain represents 5 – 10% of the reasons why people go to their GP
- around 7% of work-related accidents affect the back
- every year around 25-30% of people at work complain they have back pain
- 80% of the population will encounter back problems at some point in their lives.
WHAT DO YOU OFFER THAT IS BETTER THAN THE "CLASSICAL” BACK SCHOOL?
Back schools all have exactly the same approach, but a lot of people hold back from going to them for several reasons:
Diary commitments: our professional and family lives rarely allow us to free up enough time to be able to get to back school, attend the sessions and get back.
Distance: back schools are few and far between, so the distance increases the difficulty of freeing up time for them.
Cost: Even though social security insurance will reimburse a good part of the cost, the balance to be financed can still be too much for some people.
That’s why we decided to pull together all the components that make a back school credible and effective and put them onto a website that would be available without cost to everybody, 24/7. [24 hours a day, 7 days a week]
WHAT ELEMENTS WILL I FIND ON MY MEDICOACH?
On our website you will find:
- short animated videos that increase understanding of the causes and consequences of back pain
- a major interactive video game as an entertaining way to teach you how to prevent back pain in everyday life
- an app to encourage you and to help to you persevere with your daily exercise routine for stretching and strengthening back muscles. By sharing your profile you will be able to swap experiences with and find encouragement from other users. And the regular posting up of your results will help you stick to your commitments.
AFTER BACK PAIN, WHAT NEXT?
We have heaps of ideas, but all in good time. First of all we are going to finish the back pain chapter before embarking on another pathology.
Please support our activities to allow us to go ahead faster.
IS WHAT YOU OFFER REALLY FREE OF CHARGE ?
Yes. It is thanks to private donations from people who want to support our efforts and to our sponsors that we can put together the information on the website and give access to it free of charge.