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Dear
Editor,
In
the Fall 2005 issue Roundtable Discussion: Transfer of Successful
Practices, in the section: On The Permanente Journal as a
Connector, Arthur Huberman, MD, mentioned: "TPJ may
be most useful as an adjunct to help connect people, to raise awareness
of things that can be used. Some people just need to read something
and then they go do it, some people need to talk to others, and
some people need to go see it." Tom Janisse, MD, responded,
"Yes, and journal articles have also been used as support devices
for transfer when they are used as data or evidence and added in
reference lists."
I can
add a personal experience supporting this. In getting our psychiatrists
to embrace group visits for patients getting stabilized on meds--not
just "clinics," which are corrals from which patients
are picked off one at a time, but truly interactive groups in which
patients help each other identify acute changes and successes while
getting settled into one of our chronic care pathways--one of the
decisive validators I used was the TPJ series on group medical
visits, which brought not just evidence but prestige and authority
into the recipe. (Thank you!) The other decisive factor was the
promise of a clinician who does group work regularly as a coleader.
Betram
Barth, LCSW
Kaiser Permanente
Sacramento Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
