Procedures

These are the procedures of the support group

Before the Support Group

• 2 Mondays before group session:
  • talk to other group members about when to have meeting.

• Thursday or Friday that week:
  • brainstorm ideas for presenting topic to be discussed at next group session. Make a rough idea of what to present.
  • assign someone to either make copies of a relevant handout or find supporting educational material on the web or in clinic's supply (e.g. food models, large nutrition label, etc.)
  • assign someone to present the group's ideas to the Monday meeting
  • Assign one or two people to be the caller for recruiting purposes
    • Give that person the diabetes group binder
  • make sure that there are at least 2 volunteers to be at the actual group

• 1 Monday before group session:
  • present to the big group about how you're going to run the group that week, and what the topic is
    • receive feedback and input from the big group
  • Call Maria to make sure she is on board and OK with everything

• Monday and Tuesday before group session
  • call from list of patients to remind them of group session
  • go over what will be discussed at the meeting

• Thursday or Friday before group session:
  • Get together and finalize details of what to present the next day.
    • make sure someone is assigned to get snacks for day of
    • make sure copies are made, if necessary
  • make sure website is updated

Support Group Itself

• Will occur semi-monthly from 12:30-2:00PM
  • Create a calendar for the next few months of when the groups will be held
  • Post this calendar somewhere conspicuous
  • Print out the calendar and give it to patients
  • Also include on the calendar when planning and logistics meetings will be held
• Maintain a sign-in list to know which patients and how many are coming
• Bring healthy snacks

• Start out with introductions and facilitation by Patient Facilitator
• Talk about goals if patients have set them
• Go into the lecture that patients said they want to talk about in the previous group session
  • make as interactive as possible
  • use handouts and props as necessary
  • PRACTICE beforehand if deemed necessary
• At the end, have a closing thought, and try to get patients to set goals based on the lecture
  • Talk about incremental goal setting
• Have a scribe to take notes of what happened in the meeting
• Hopefully bring food of some sort - just a light, simple snack
• Need a whiteboard or flipchart
• Folders for patients to keep copies of goal sheets and handouts

Logistics

Patient Recruitment:

• Keep a list at clinic for diabetes support group referrals
• Calling patients for reminders
  • keep list of patient names and phone numbers IN CLINIC
• Family members are OK to bring to the meetings
• Flyer: flyer.ppt

Educational materials

• Maintain copies of handouts
• keep up collection of folders for patients
• Catalog and keep current collection of health ed materials for the group (i.e. food models, nutrition models)
• Talk about new materials the clinic could use in a monthly fashion - ie, a new diabetes cookbook, better handouts, etc.
• Talk about the topic to be discussed the next saturday in the prior Monday meeting to get input from the whole Clinica group about the plan

Other

• Coordinate volunteers that will be at the support group sessions
• Coordinate acquisition of materials needed for the group
• Update the website
• Keep notes and do de-briefs on how support group sessions went so that there is a record of what works and what can be improved for future sessions

Volunteer Needs

• Need to train about 4 people
  • Will be up-to-date on important diabetes topics so they can lead education efforts on them
  • Think of innovative ways to educate about topics and elicit patient suggestions for doing so
• Rotation of people - every 4 months or so
  • During the last month of the rotation, train next group of volunteers
• The list of presentations of topics will be discussed monthly with the whole group to see if there are any creative suggestions about how to improve the lecture topics
  • Keep all procedures online so all can view and comment on them
• Meet with the patient facilitator once or twice per month to check up on how she's doing and see if she has any suggestions for improvement of the group

Managing this website

Updating this website is crucial to keeping a record of the procedures that will make the support group successful.

How to manage this website:

• Either log in with the Clinica MB login and password that I gave you, or create your own login and use the Clinica MB login to give yourself permission to edit the website
• Click edit on the bottom of the screen to edit whatever you want
• Here's a reference to how to edit the website: Quick Reference