What do you do at your support group meetings?

Just curious to know what goes on at other support group meetings. Things I'd like to know are:

1. Does your doctor, or any doctor, attend the meeting?

2. Does your doctor speak or present anything or do they just attend?

3. Do you have guest speakers? What types of speakers have presented?

4. Do you have round table discussion, where the topic is pre-planned? If so, what are some of the topics you have discussed?

5. Is your meeting primarily sleeve patients?

6. Is your meeting primarily for pre-ops, newbies, or maintainers?

7. What do you love or dislike about your meetings?

Thanks in advance for all your help!
Jen

My surgeon runs the meetings. The first hour is for pre-ops. It's free-form. He answers their questions. The second hour is for post-ops and he generally has a topic in mind or a guest speaker and a lot of times the nutritionist attends and has handouts such recipes or how to get through the holidays without overeating.

Guest speakers are usually the nutritionist, plastic surgeons, fitness trainers and people pushing health products (like we all had our immune system tested to see if we needed antioxidents once).

There is a core group of post-ops who come to the meetings and how many pre-ops there are varies wildly. Sometimes we outnumber them by quite a lot! Other times, not so much.

I love these meetings because I always learn something at them. This is completely because my surgeon runs them. I've been to patient-run meetings and they are not nearly as good.

i have the same surgeon as McMadame so ours are like hers except we are in a rural area so they are much smaller and more personal and do not have guest speakers. But they are always excellent. Because surgeon only comes here every two months, I've been thinking of starting a group for the in between months that would be informal chat.   diane

My doctor does not come to the group meeting it is run by his bariatric coordinator. My Doctor has two support groups one for lap band the other is for bypass/Sleeve.

I attend the Bypass/Sleeve group.

The Bariatric coordinator takes alot of input from the Senior members. Actually one of the senior patients who has been out for 7 years leads majority of the meetings. He is extremely knowledgeable and we all look up to him.

The group is held once a month. We decided to alternate between an educational meeting and a wrap session each month.

For the educational meeting we usually have a speaker. We have had plastic Surgeons, Nutritionists, Hair stylists, etc...

The wrap sessions is more of a free form question and answer period.

The meeting is for Pre-ops, Newbies and maintainers.

My doctor also does not attend our meetings (once per month).  They are bypass/sleeve meetings (lapband is done at a separate time) but I've noticed that 90% in attendance are sleevers.  We always have some sort of presentation or prepared topic, either run by our bariatric coordinator or our nutritionist/PA.  Sometimes we have guest speakers....plastic surgeons, fitness gurus...etc.  We end the meetings w/Q&A and then people seem to linger and visit with one another about specific issues and recommendations.  We've also met at a grocery store and gone around looking at products and talking about how to make good bariatric choices.  I particularly liked that one.  He then challenged us in groups to find good products.  Our meetings are open to pre-op and post-op which I think is nice so the pre-op gets a glimpse of what is coming.

Deb