About this course
This clinical workshop is designed to help DBT clinicians strengthen the effectiveness and impact of their DBT Consultation Team meetings. This session emphasizes practical, actionable strategies that any team member can implement to improve the structure and process of team meetings. Strengthening both team structure and process supports the primary functions of DBT Consultation Team: enhancing clinician skills, promoting adherence, and reducing burnout.
Structure: Tools to Optimize Time and Focus
The first section of the workshop reviews aids and tools that have been developed by teams and for teams to help increase the effectiveness of DBT Consultation Team meetings. These tools aim to help teams to make efficient use of time, assist clinicians in clarifying what they need from their team during team meetings, and facilitate the use of the treatment itself to catch drift and return to greater adherence.
Process: Skills for Giving and Receiving Consultation
The second section of the workshop focuses on how clinicians make their requests and how they receive feedback and consultation from their team during DBT Consultation Team meetings, e.g., clarifying the question that is being asked and identifying what type of need the clinician has. Similarly, we will discuss strategies for consulting to our team members, e.g., clarifying information relevant to the clinician’s request, using the observer role to enact DBT principles and strategies [noticing judgments, bringing awareness to unresolved tensions in team, noticing when the team is jumping to problem solving before a full assessment]. The workshop will emphasize clinician skills that are needed to be effective consultants to each other as team members, including the ability to provide change-oriented feedback in a way that facilitates change without fragilizing team members and while also remaining compassionate and nonjudgmental.
Research-Informed Practice
I propose to record video of a yet-not-complete interview with Amy Gaglia-Essletzbichler about her recently published article on DBT Consultation Team (see Reference cited below). Amy utilized Melanie Harned’s coding tools (originally developed for assessment of DBT Individual Therapy) and used them for evaluation of DBT Consultation Team. I will interview Amy regarding the information that she gathered about team within the study, e.g., what effective and ineffective team behaviors were observed in the study and what effective behaviors were most often observed to be lacking.
