Establishing the first meeting
You’ve made your first foray into gathering a group of CDI professionals in your area. You’ve made contacts, and people are interested. Now you need to set a time and location for an initial get-together. First, get permission from your facility to host the first meeting and pick a time convenient for you.
Alternatively, send an e-mail to your new colleagues and ask for volunteers and votes for convenient days and times. Be forewarned, however, such a democratic approach takes a little bit of additional time and you’ll never please everyone.
Advertise the meeting: You don’t need to purchase an advertisement in USA Today, but consider drafting a flyer with the meeting date, time, location, contact, and possible agenda to post at area hospitals and send to ACDIS and other professionals. We’d be happy to post it as an attachment in the ACDIS Blog.
Welcoming CDI peers
Identify roles and responsibilities: This may sound too formal, but it’s a good idea for the host to pick someone to be the official greeter, someone to take notes, and someone to run the meeting. This alleviates the pressure on any one volunteer and helps the meetings run a bit smoother.
The official greeter should direct participants to a table with a sign-in form and blank name tags. Name tags, Gail Marini, MM, RN, CCS, manager of clinical documentation for SouthShoreHospital (SSH) in Weymouth, MA suggests, foster easier conversation and recognition. You may have “spoken” over e-mail but have never seen one another. Name tags take the guess work out generating relationships.
The sign-in sheet (you can find a sample developed by the New England Chapter in the Forms & Tools Library on the ACDIS Web site, ) should have space for participants to sign in, provide their e-mail and postal mailing address, and areas of further interest.
Such a sheet helps move participants into the meeting by providing them with a clear entry and action point. It also gives the group additional ideas for future discussion topics.
- Tip: You may want to print out two or more sign up sheets to avoid any traffic jams at the doorway.
- Tip: To avoid additional hassles for the hosts, leave the name tags blank and let participants fill in their names as they wish.
Extend introductions: First meetings generally reflect an air of informality. Foster that feeling. Spend the bulk of the time letting people get to know one another.
When you do “call the meeting to order” welcome visitors and bring the meeting to a start with a round of introductions. As local chapter participation grows this may not always be possible. In the initial stages, however, this simple act makes people feel comfortable.
Ask participants to state their name, their facility, their location, and one professional problem area they struggle with. This generates ideas for meetings as well as conversation and solutions.
During subsequent meetings, you may want to leave about 15 minutes for people to take their coats off and say hello to each other.
Determining chapter structure
Meeting frequency: Everyone’s busy. How often your chapter meets should reflect the needs of attendants. You can meet as regularly or as infrequently as you need—monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, annually—it’s up to you. And feel free to change this as your local chapter’s needs changes. You may be excited to meet monthly when you first start, but find by month six that a quarterly schedule better fits your needs.
“We set the ground rules at the first meeting,” says Linnea Thennes, clinical documentation specialistat NorthwestCommunityHospital, Arlington Heights, IL.They voted for Thursdays as the most convenient day of the week to meet and chose a quarterly schedule to reduce the burden of time commitments.
“These meetings are a big time commitment especially with adding the drive time to get to the different hospitals,” she says.
Organize meeting hosts: Some CDI groups rotate responsibility for hosting the meeting, establishing the discussion topic, and of course bringing the munchies. So, for example, one time Varnavas Health hosts and the next time Murphy System Health Care takes the lead.
At its first meeting the Northern Illinois CDI Networkasked for volunteers to host meetings and planned its meeting schedule out about a year.The host facility picks the actual meeting date, sets the agenda, summarizes the meeting minutes, and communicates with the rest of the group regarding their particular meeting, Thennes says.
Either way, try to establish a volunteer for your next meeting before you adjourn your first session.
Furthermore, the host of the previous meeting should try to stay involved and help the next host as much as possible, Marini says. “This allows everyone to grow from the experience so the group can be bigger and better.”
Discussion topics and length depend on the interest and needs of those in your group. You might consider best query practices one month, and in the next plan a visit from a physician advisor or champion. Use your sign-in sheets and e-mail lists to generate ideas.
Having fun
Local professional meetings represent a way for you to reach out and help your fellow CDI specialists. Share what you’ve learning during your professional experience and learn from others in the field, too.
Take a group photo: ACDIS is a community, after all. If you e-mail us your photo and the names of attendees we’ll post it on ACDIS Blog and social networking sites to help generate interest.