2. Assembling Your Team
Implementation of group visits is most successful with a core team of about 3-5 people including a clinician and a team leader as well as staff who can fill the roles outlined in the table below (one person can serve multiple roles). You might also ask others beyond your team—from within your clinic or the community—to assist in certain capacities.
“We can do some amazing things at the health center if we’re allowed the time and get the support. So, just the little team I have, I mean the whole center is like that… employees here have the right mission. So, it’s very, very rewarding when you get to do a project and see it do well.”
Suggested Roles for Team Personnel
*These are only examples. Your team does not have to include all roles. One person can serve multiple roles.*
“Having our behavioral health clinician be present and speak about depression, anxiety, and stress really helped our patients… Also, it reminded our patients that we do offer behavioral services and that we are here for them.”
Team Effectiveness
Key ingredients for an effective team include:
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- Communication. Dedicated time for meeting as a team helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and feels their voice is heard. While planning your program, we recommend having a regularly scheduled meeting time. Or if it is feasible, you might consider a half- or full-day planning retreat. During implementation, we recommend allocating time to debrief as a team following each group visit.
- Collaboration. Working together as a team facilitates creativity and problem-solving. Distributing tasks among the team ensures the experience is manageable for everyone and not burdensome for a given individual. If necessary, rotate responsibilities so no one feels they are alone during the process or doing all the heavy lifting. Find fun and creative ways to de-stress as a team. Check-in with team members, ask for help when needed, share resources, express concerns, and give feedback to enhance wellbeing and team support.
- Shared vision and goals. Implementing a new program is both exciting and challenging. Selecting team members with the right attitude and willingness to participate is important. We have found that teams who had the most success in implementing group visits strongly agreed that all team members understood project goals and had a “we are in it together” attitude.
Time Commitment
The majority of time and effort to implement group visits is spent on planning and preparation. For teams starting a new group visit program, conducting the actual group visit sessions typically accounts for less than half of the time commitment. Keep this in mind when deciding who will be on your core team. If possible, ask for protected time dedicated to the program. This recommendation was echoed by CEOs and medical directors talking about their health centers’ experiences with group visits: “I don’t think you can just give some of these tasks to somebody that’s already got a full-time job and say here, we want you to do this,” and “To make it sustainable you need to have some protected time so that the prep work can be done.”
Potential Roadblocks
You would like the dietitian at your health center to lead some group visit sessions, but they are reluctant to help out because it would require changing their work day and clinic times. Plus, they do not think they would be good at leading a group. How do you address their concerns and engage them in supporting the group visit program?
- Give them as much advance notice as possible. Be flexible in which sessions and how many times you want them to attend.
- Tailor your request to their passions, interests, and strengths. Explain why you think they would be a valuable part of your program and how interested patients are in the topic.
- Offer to do a mock session with them to practice their presentations and activities. Tell them you can have patients write questions ahead of time so they have time to prepare. Assure them you work as a team so other staff will be there to help facilitate the session.
- What else could you try?
The team member who led the educational component of the group visits has accepted a position out of state and will no longer be able to lead the visits. What will you do for your upcoming group visits?
- Make sure the team member shares materials they have prepared before they leave and ask them to orient someone else on the team who can lead the next session.
- Invite guest speakers with relevant expertise to present at upcoming group visit sessions. Modify planned topics if needed based on speaker availability.
- Get creative. Find educational videos or activities online, have an open-ended Q&A session, or empower patients to take the lead in sharing their own tips, experiences, recipes, coping strategies, etc.
- What else could you try?
Your team is having difficulty finding enough time to plan, prepare for, and debrief after group visit sessions. Team members have a lot of other responsibilities so it is not always easy to schedule meetings or find time to work on the group visit project. What can your team do?
- Have a regular recurring meeting time blocked on everyone’s calendar. Or extend time blocked for the group visit to accommodate meeting time after the patients leave.
- Prepare for meetings to make them efficient. Prioritize which things you really need to discuss as a team when you meet vs. which things you can work on individually or communicate about via email, text, etc.
- Designate a team leader to keep track of plans and tasks, follow-up with team members who can’t attend meetings, and keep everyone in the loop.
- What else could you try?