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The Work is Only as Good as the Team: Strategies f ...
Presentation Q&A
Presentation Q&A
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Video Transcription
So, several questions have started to roll in. So, one, you know, I think there was a lot of positive reaction to that very structured training plan. When people first arrived, that first six months, we've got that very specific layout. And this person wrote in and said, you know, when we have new hires, they're really just thrown into the fire. We need them to start billing right away. And so, how do you balance orienting new hires with billable hours? That's a very good question. So, this is a little bit what I was talking about, that the out-of-setting, if I'm going to use that terminology, because it's broadly, and out-of-setting varies in different places. But the out-of-setting needs to understand, really, that training is a part of delivering an evidence-based practice. So, it's important to kind of have that clear expectation, I think, that training and implementation support is important in delivering an evidence-based practice. Now, most times when people start a job, there is a little lull in the beginning where people get oriented in other ways, too, in terms of HR and in terms of medical forms and clearance and fire safety, et cetera, infection control. I mean, we have all those requirements. And I think that if we think about this type of training requirement in that vein, then you would have, you know, where it's a requirement expectation. You will, you know, then will allow for this, for people to go to training. And I think it's also a matter of how to best structure it with the team, so that as a team leader, you think about when do you sort of schedule it, so that people have time to go to training. Wonderful. One other question that has been coming up a lot in the field, and then also I'm seeing it again today, is how do you handle when someone who's been on a team is then promoted to the team leader? And, you know, there's a shift there, that person's role, both handling their change, but also the reaction from the rest of the team. Do you have any tips on that? That's a great question. And in a way, it's a good thing when it happens, because the person, the team leader, knows what it means to be on a team and knows the ins and outs of the teamwork. But shifting that authority, you know, that change in authority, that could be tricky. And that's true for any, in any work setting. So I think the having the team, you know, in a way, be very clear on what roles they have on the team, what they contribute to the team, is really key. And that the idea of the team lead, as I mentioned, needs to have the sense of, you know, often doesn't know everything, right? You can't be an expert on eight different professions. But how to facilitate this conversation and make room for everybody's expertise to come to the table, I think is a really important thing. And that's something that takes a while to learn. Yeah. So someone wrote in and said, when you use the terminology of interprofessional, is it the same as interdisciplinary team and or comprehensive integrated service team? Or is it specific to a social model, peer-oriented service? Basically, are those words used interchangeably? Or do they have, is interprofessional team something very specific? I actually, I think it's sort of a newer way of talking about things. You know, we have used the interdisciplinary team, a multidisciplinary team. So there's been many, many terms for this. I don't, I'm thinking here about it. And Amy, you may have some things to contribute to this. To me, it seems, maybe other people on the line too, to me, it seems that interprofessional really talks about the integration among the professions and the synergy that you try to create on an interprofessional team, and that it can be in different places, right? As I mentioned before, it's not always integrated, but an interprofessional team can be across agencies and also across, let's say, departments within an agency. Yeah. I sometimes think of, when I think of integrated service, I think of integrated physical health and mental health. And I think one of the reasons we moved away from interdisciplinary to more interprofessional was when we added peers and clerks and a variety of other individuals as important pieces of the team. And it may not necessarily, therefore, be disciplinary driven. So it's not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, there's also a bunch of other people who make it work. And at that point, I think we changed it into more interprofessional. I mean, that's just my sense. But I think it's more inclusive of all of these roles that may not be discipline driven. Thank you, Amy. That was a really good presentation. Yeah. Great. Okay. Thanks. So there's a lot of things coming in. So what are some useful techniques to support the team in realigning when there are unclear roles or responsibilities, for example, due to turnover, or for example, understaffed teams? So what can we do to help the team function in this not perfect world? Well, yes. Good question. I mean, as far as this happens, right? Where people are like, yeah, that's great if we had all those roles, but we don't have all those roles. So I think, well, I think the idea behind this presentation, not so much just about ACT, where there are these very specific roles, and sometimes there are vacancies and teams struggle, obviously, but what's important is that you know what you're hired to do, so that you have a sense of what your scope of practice is on a team, so that you can define it, so you can say, this is what I do, and understand what other people do. Now, in times of change, or vacancies, or kind of where things, that's where it's good to have these conversations, where you kind of, you talk about how you, in a sense, divvy up the work, so that you, and when you talk about it, you also know that you are not, you know, there's so many dimensions to the work, that it can be truly overwhelming, right? Because the social, and it's like, you know, the medical, the psychiatric, the environment, all those dimensions can be, there's so many different parts to it. So sometimes, if you feel like you have to take care of everything, that's very overwhelming, but if you know that you take care of this piece, this area, you know that your colleagues, you know, they have the other areas, it's a way of kind of being able to focus without feeling that you're dropping the ball, or something's gonna, you know, not work out. So that's why these interprofessional teams can really share, though, in the work, support one another, and feel like you don't have to solve all these problems all by yourself. Yeah. I mean, I think that, yeah. Going back to talk, it's talking about clearly defining what you're doing, what your colleagues are doing, and keep it sort of, keep it as a whole. Right. And you're sort of also saying, it's an ongoing conversation. As the team morphs, it has a new person, or a person burns out, or someone has a hard time with a certain skill, the team can continually communicate about who's covering what. Right. And I think that's a daily, or I don't know, in act it's a daily conversation, but it should be a frequent conversation, because lots of things happen, you know, within, it can happen in a very short period of time, and you want to set up a structure where people are in the know, so they can, you can cover for one another, you can bring something up that somebody else is working on when you're with a person, but that is, that it's not, it's, that you're trying to not, you're trying to integrate, you're trying to get everybody on the same page, so that you can all work in the same direction. Okay, I have two questions that are very specific to CPI. I'm going to give those to you, and then we'll move, we might have time to move back to some of the team building questions. One is, is it possible to take the team lead, the CPI team leader training, number one, and how would they do that? And two, are the family, let me make sure I'm getting this right, there was a question about the family, more information about the family trainings, is that also something that can, people can access? Well, thank you for that question. I think what I would suggest is us having more of a conversation about what parts of what it is that you're thinking about, that you're interested in terms of the team leader training here at the ACT Institute. This is very specific to the ACT model in New York, but there may be things that we could think about that could be helpful for your role wherever you are, because there are some very general practices, you know, or practices that might be the same no matter where you are, and the same for the family training. We do on the CPI, some of our educational material is behind some logins, but there are, if you go online, you can see more information if you just go to CPI, you Google it, it'll pop up, you'll see that there is some description of what sort of the ACT Institute, but there's also an area of the website where you can look for material and training that you can access for free, and that's downloadable. So please visit us. Yes. Okay. I think we have time for just like one or two more questions, there's so many good ones in here. So this person said, right now the ACT team I work on is experiencing intense interprofessional conflict. What are some strategies for rebuilding trust and respect among colleagues? Lord knows this applies to probably most people on this call, this always happens. So how do we begin to rebuild? So, very good question. And because many times ACT teams are very, you know, they're small teams, right? And they deal with very difficult situations, and often, you know, vicarious trauma is an area that we really have to pay attention to. So the staff retreats are really important. Some of these exercises that I sort of alluded to, you know, getting to know the people behind the roles on your team, even getting to know their role, do you know how they are trained? Like understanding how people are trained is not something we often talk about on interprofessional teams. So how is the psychiatrist and the vocational specialist trained or the substance abuse specialist trained, so that you get a better understanding of the scope of their expertise and how they were trained. Now, the second part is the people behind the roles. How do we get to know one another? I would suspect that when I see a lot of interpersonal conflict or tension or disagreement on the team, it's often related to the impact of the work and the impact of the work on each of the people individually. So that many of us, when we work in behavioral health, we come to this work for a particular reason. We have a particular personal mission. Sometimes it's also associated with some of our experiences in our lives. So, interacting and then working in very intense environment can also bring, you know, can be triggering or it can activate, is a better word, sort of other personal experiences. And that can be, instead of, we often react and getting to a way where we can talk about one's reactions can often lead to a better sort of understanding of one another and also supporting each other when we are working in situations that can be very intense and difficult and traumatizing, frankly. So the point, the tip would be, you know, see if you can get a staff retreat together where you can sit down outside of the work environment, maybe, you know, what we do here with the ACT Institute is we come out and lead sort of staff retreats where we talk about these things and trying to get beyond sort of the detention to get to a place of more understanding. Like a trauma, you know, not what's wrong with you, but what happened, what is it that's bothering you, so you can get to the, to a better understanding of reaction. Okay, here's another specific one. Can you speak to the special considerations involved in incorporating peers into ACT teams or teams in general? Of course, there's a whole literature around this, and we've actually had some great webinars on SMI Advisor around integrating peers onto teams, which I would highly recommend this person look at our calendar. But do you have any, like, sort of quick tips or things that you think about? So, very good question, and I know your SMI Advisor has had, the webinars have been really great. I think it really has to do with understanding a role of a peer and what the added value is that peers bring to a clinical team. So, we have worked very hard at developing a scope of practice for peers on a clinical team, and how to integrate, the whole idea of integrating peers onto a clinical team, because peers are not doing clinical work, they are doing peer work, and there's a number of different activities and training and ways for peers that can support the team and the participants and the families, you know, through intentional peer support, through, you know, modeling, through developing RAP plans, which is a real, it's a peer tool, the Wellness Action Recovery Plan, which is the RAP plan that are developed by peers. So, really finding very specific about what the role of a peer is, so that the peer brings the peerness, and is not thinking that they are doing, or that the team thinks that the peer should be doing the clinical issues. So, that's what I would say, is really thinking about what is the added value of having a peer on a clinical team, often it's good to have two, so they are real peers, not just one peer, because they can support one another, but also, how do you think about the scope of practice, what is peerness versus clinical work, those are very important discussions to have on a team.
Video Summary
The video transcript discusses several questions related to team training, team leadership, and interprofessional collaboration. The speaker responds to questions about balancing new hire orientation with billable hours, handling the transition of a team member to a team leader role, and clarifies the difference between terms like interprofessional, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive integrated service team. The speaker emphasizes the importance of clear role definition and ongoing communication within teams, especially in the face of turnover or understaffing. They also provide insights into rebuilding trust and respect among colleagues and incorporating peers into teams, highlighting the value of staff retreats, understanding personal experiences and reactions, and defining the role of peers on clinical teams. The speaker suggests exploring the CPI website for further resources on team leader training and family training. However, they note that some of the educational material may require login credentials.
Keywords
team training
team leadership
interprofessional collaboration
clear role definition
staff retreats
Funding for SMI Adviser was made possible by Grant No. SM080818 from SAMHSA of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, SAMHSA/HHS or the U.S. Government.
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