The National MS Society offers a variety of online interactive classes for people living with MS and their families. The classes cover a range of topics from working with your healthcare team to career decisions and financial planning. Online learners can take as many courses as they are interested in, at no charge to them or chapters. Learners work through the classes at their own pace and on a timetable that best meets their schedules.
The classes are accessible through a dedicated webpage on the Society’s website. The webpage, located under Living Well with MS>Society Programs and Services, features short descriptions of each class (seven in total), as well as links to instructions and the external website. The classes currently offered are:
Adapting: Financial Planning for a Life with MS…Together
A large part of navigating MS is managing your money and planning wisely for your future. It is never too early to begin evaluating your income, assets, debts, benefits, and other resources. This course provides information and strategies to help you plan wisely for the future and meet the financial challenges that often accompany life with MS.
Career Decisions: Relationship Matters
Living with MS is about transition, but with knowledge, you can find a path where you can continue to demonstrate your experience, talent, and passion.
Intimacy: Enriching Your Relationship
Intimacy and sexuality are sensitive issues for most people, but when you or someone you love has MS, there may be even more challenges. It helps to know that there are ways you can manage problems and improve communication and you can do that through the interactive scenarios and worksheets included throughout the course.
PROGRAMS & SERVICES
My Life, My MS, My Decisions is a four module series that provides learners with the skills and resources to enhance their decision-making abilities on topics important to their health care.
Module 1: Teaming Up with Your Healthcare Providers
This module focuses on communicating and working with your healthcare team. A good relationship with your healthcare team is the basis for all of the medical decisions you will have to make.
Module 2: Navigating the Medication Maze
In this course, you will learn about some of the available medications and why doctors choose to prescribe them. You will also get a chance to practice analyzing the risks/adverse effects and benefits of medications, accounting for things such as medication side effects and costs. You will have the opportunity to use a decision map to help you objectively review information and reach some conclusions about which medications might be best for you.
Module 3: Considering Clinical Trials
Many people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis are interested in participating in a clinical trial for a variety of reasons. However, before making such a big decision, it is important to be familiar with how clinical trials work, how people with MS are selected for participation, and what to expect if accepted into a clinical trial.
Module 4: Achieving Optimal Wellness
As the last class in the My Life, My MS, My Decisions series, this module presents wellness from a holistic point of view, not just exercise and diet. Success in achieving a goal will help you go on to achieve others, taking you beyond the limitations MS may try to impose and empowering you to achieve balance in all areas of your life—physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and social.
Learners new to the online system will first need to create an account at https://gm1.geolearning.com/geonext/nmss/login.geo and selecting “Request a new account.” Returning users can access the classes directly by logging in at this same address.
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The National MS Society has an exciting menu of MS Learn Online webcasts currently available on its Web site. Each webcast features experts presenting topics relevant to those affected by multiple sclerosis. These webcasts are a great opportunity to educate people about multiple sclerosis from the convenience of their own computer.
New webcasts debut on the first and third Thursday of each month throughout the year. Most webcasts are now also available in MP3 files allowing simple conversion to MP3 players such as iPods.
Past programs and their written transcripts also can be accessed.