What is your process group like?

[outofhere]

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I think most training programs have process group. I am curious how yours is, and what it is like, and how it facilitated your learning of group process.

I will start. My process group includes all the residents- it is a small program, four residents per year. It is somewhat mandatory: if one chooses not to do group, one has to come up with an independent group related project. This past year, all of us were members of group. We don't say all the things we want to say... but there are fights, tears, the works. I love it.

 

[fiatslug]

Ours re-started and kind of fell apart last year. I'm also in a small residency (4/yr), and ours wasn't mandatory, and the few problem-child residents about whom the rest of us wanted to process never came! Attrition was high, and we let it go. No one's really been clamoring for it since. We meet weekly in residents' council (without a facilitator)--any big stuff gets handled there, and pretty well.

 

[Anasazi23]

Ours re-started and kind of fell apart last year. I'm also in a small residency (4/yr), and ours wasn't mandatory, and the few problem-child residents about whom the rest of us wanted to process never came! Attrition was high, and we let it go. No one's really been clamoring for it since. We meet weekly in residents' council (without a facilitator)--any big stuff gets handled there, and pretty well.

I echo fiatslug's experience almost exactly. We had a moderated group, but it gradually fell apart. Issues with specific residents weren't dealt with properly since...they didn't come. Now we just sort of hash it out in the weekly resident's meeting.

 

[outofhere]

That's too bad that the groups withered away. I think that perhaps our group has hung on, despite having had difficult characters, is that when it gets really heated, our moderator focuses on the process, the scapegoat, the one carrying all the anger...etc. That seems to help.

Anyone out there with a really active group?

 

[MBK2003]

Our residency program is larger and each PGY class has it's own process group that meets weekly from PGY-2 to PGY-4. Our own classes group runs the gamut from administrative meeting to hashing out feelings about scheduling and the various services. We've had a few more tense sessions dealing with issues like maternity leave and fairness/unfairness of call schedules etc. My sense is that process group depends on the tone of the moderator, ours is not psychodynamically trained so it's more a supportive format, however, after 2 yrs we've noticed that the affect is much more "hot" when he's away for the week. Our program is set up so that each class is solely responsible for making up their call schedules in PGY2, 3, and 4 so a lot of process group time is devoted to working out those schedules and processing the aftermath of who has to work Xmas, New Year's, etc.

MBK2003

 

[whopper]

Its funny because at the last one we had, some residents were lashing out at other residents after it ended, behind their backs.

Its ironic, because the entire point of the meeting is to clear these problems up, but some chose to use it to only further the existing problems.

I described it to a nurse, "to me this is like a pulmonologist who tells his patients not to smoke, but he smokes, we psychiatrists are so quick to point out axis II behaviors as immature, then some of us do it ourselves".

Oh well. Yeah its annoying, but I'm not going to add fuel to the fire. As bad as it was, its going to happen anywhere. There's always a few stinkers that mess it up whenever the group is big enough.

Anyways, my program once a year-all the residents get together and voice their opinions on how the program should be improved, and we're told to talk honestly. We voice our opinions to the Dept secretary, who is supposed to keep the complaints anonymous.

2x a year each resident talks to the program director 1 to 1. They can also voice problems.
Then 1x a year we also get together to voice any problems but only specific to the curriculum.