NEED HELP for GROUP IDEAS

[Supermomandnurse]

I am a pretty new psych nurse and am loving it, however we run groups as do the social workers. I enjoy the open forum psychotherapy style of group, but have been advised by the managers to stick to a more educational style group with nursing, medication compliance and relapse prevention focus. I would like some ideas how to formal this. The managers are very hands off and the Social Workers are tired of hearing, "we already did this group this morning, after my and my colleagues groups.

Thak you

[Morgan314]

I use the workbooks from http://www.treatmentteam.com

very informative.

[rn/writer, RN]

Ask your patients what kinds of topics they would like to see covered.

What age group are you working with? That can definitely influence your choices.

When I worked with adolescents, some groups covered Current Events, which, as you might guess, was kind of a catch-all topic. But what it did was get them talking. Many times, the real subject of the group wasn't the listed topic but the tangents that led to their real concerns.

I would also recommend speaking with the social work staff to see what they are covering so, a) you don't duplicate, b) you can perhaps pick a complementary topic, and c) you can get some insight into how to arrive at a topic. It's possible that certain areas would not be looked upon as therapeutic enough to meet insurance criteria. You would want to know this and who better to learn from than the ones who are already making it work. Just be clear that you aren't trying to steal their thunder.

Let us know what happens.

[MALE*RN*777]

I understand your troubles. You have clients that have been there forever and new ones coming in who need to be educated. You may want to split the groups like we do from those with higher functions and those lower functioning, those who have been there longer and those who are newer. Heres a quick HIV/AIDs one I learned from a Train the Trainer Group that works good in a 5 + group. You take and give 3 pieces of blank small papers to your clients and include yourself in this. On your papers you write HIV/AIDs. You tell them they are on a cruise ship and heading for a dance in which you will hook up with someone and have a relationship with. As you sing, tell the clients to walk around and give one piece of the paper to one other patient until you exchange all 3 of your original papers with 3 different peers (again you are included in this). At the end tell the patients not to let the others see their papers but if they have anything written on the paper to rewrite this onto the other blank papers. After doing the little song and dance 3 times ask the clients to raise their hands if there is something on their papers. Usually all but one or maybe all will have the words HIV/AIDs written on the papers. Then you just need to say this is how easy it is to spread the disease. You can either continue or end the group and have the clients think about this on their own.

[Supermomandnurse]

I love the idea..but a lot of my people are older, MicA person's who are not capable or in the state of mind for sexual intamacy. SOme people with sexual abuse issues may not appriciate it either..thanx for the inpt. My manager says I need to stick to "nursing ed" BORING sometimes, as I like to explore deeper stuff that is reserved for LSW..I think we shoud be able to do therapy more on a in depth level..I was gonna talk to my manager about games and bingo..Thanx

[Morgan314]

When I worked on an inpt unit years ago, our unit manager assigned each nurse a subject for groups, then left us to our own devises to come up with something. She assigned "nutrition" to one nurse, and she came up with some fun stuff to do like having patients make collages from pictures of foods in magazines, helping them learn simple meal planning, and to encourage them to choose healthy foods. I was assigned "music" and it was a lot of fun finding therapeutic activities to do like playing old records and reminescing over events that took place when those particular songs were popular. Sometimes we'd do simple stretching exercises or even dance. I would carefully choose songs with lyrics that would prompt therapeutic discussions, we'd draw to music or make collages from old magazines. I'd do groups focussing on how different music makes us feel and effects our attitudes and moods. Country music can be depressing, certain rap songs can stir up anger, and instrumental music can help a person relax. I'd try to find songs that would make them laugh, and in some groups, members would write their own songs.

The purpose of my groups with music was to encourage expression, improve use of leisure time and to increase awareness of how music effects attitudes and moods.

If you plan to stick with educational groups, http://www.treatmentteam.com offers the very best. I use these workbooks in groups I do now in the outpatient setting.

[Psychaprn]

My old patients liked stress management groups and women's groups as well as relaxatiion and DBT groups.

[olol765]

I hated doing groups!! But some of my favorites were diabetes, htn, hygiene, nutrition and exercise. Also, sometimes I would give them a blank face that they drew in how they felt over the weekend. I'd pick it up with their names on the back and we'd all try to guess who it was. They loved that one!! I did a review on Fridays: They all went over how they 1)took their meds 2) hygiene 3) sleep 4)having fun 5) nutrition 6) exercise 7) being with others 8) being productive & 9) symptoms. I would have the higher functioning ones rate each one on a scale of 1-4 (1. never 2. sometimes 3. most of the time 4. always)