Local hospital offers health workshops for women

Wellness Wednesdays held monthly at Three Forks Bike and Brew

Pullman+Regional+Hospital+on+Sept.+29+2014.

CONNOR MCBRIDE | DAILY EVERGREEN FILE

Pullman Regional Hospital on Sept. 29 2014.

ELAYNE RODRIGUEZ, Evergreen reporter

The Pullman Regional Hospital will continue to host workshops for the women’s health series once a month at Three Forks Bike and Brew to educate and help women to understand physiological health changes.

The upcoming workshop for the Women’s Wellness Wednesday event will be held from 5:30-6:30 p.m. on Oct. 9.

Noel Nicolai, PRH healthier communities coordinator, said the Women’s Wellness Wednesday workshop was started because many women had questions regarding their personal health, and other women offered personal advice.

“We get information from television and get information from magazines, but I wanted them to have the facts,” Nicolai said.

All the topics bring a coffeehouse style environment where people can find answers to personal health issues, she said.

The workshops have a forum where women privately put questions in a box to receive professional answers in a comfortable setting, Nicolai said.

“You go into a doctor’s appointments, or any kind of wellness provider appointment, and sometimes you might want to ask a question, but you are shy or do not have a question right there,” she said.

Leslie Robison, PRH clinical health psychologist, will speak about “empty nest identity” in the upcoming workshop, Nicolai said.

Women sometimes go through feelings of grief, or the loss stage, after their kids go to college, she said.

There are several issues associated with personal identity for women and starting a new stage in their lives, she said.

One of the topics that will be covered at one of the workshops is reidentifying and re-energizing pelvic health issues and uterine care as women, she said.

Nicolai said the workshop is designed for women 40 years old or older, but everybody is welcome.

“The series is really about loving yourself as a female if that is what you identify with,” she said.

The workshops are sponsored by the Center for Learning and Innovation and the Women’s Leadership Guild.