Building a Culture of Collaboration and Compassion in the Care of Homeless Patients

Rationale: Homeless patients often have multiple interacting social, psychological, behavioral and medical needs. Interprofessional (IP) teams of relevant health care professionals have been shown to deliver high quality care for such vulnerable patients while also reducing the need for costly emergency and inpatient care. Our IP team of clinicians and trainees from six primary care and mental health disciplines has cared for 3000 homeless Veterans for the past four years. Our systematic approach to teamwork, humanism and clinician well-being has created a robust, empathetic and satisfying care and learning environment for patients, staff, clinicians and trainees. We share the models, tools, practices, and outcomes that highlight the synergistic benefit of the three pillars of our work: teamwork, humanism, and wellbeing.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will:

1. Describe the value of interprofessional teamwork, humanism, and wellness in creating and robust learning and care environment

2. Apply relevant models, tools and skills to:

a. Practice effectively in clinical teams

b. Deliver compassionate care to vulnerable patients, and

c. Promote personal well-being

Teaching Methods:

Introduction (15 minutes): We will review learning goals and our approach to IP teamwork, humanism and well-being related to patient care and our experiential learning environment. We will briefly present our care and team learning outcomes.

Virtual Experiential Breakout Groups (25 minutes each): Participants will be asked to select one of the three breakout groups. Each group session will involve participant reflection to identify their learning needs, followed by application of relevant models and tools. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions and will learn new approaches to use in their own settings.

1. Group 1: Interprofessional Teamwork �" Participants will be given one minute to reflect on a challenge related to IP clinical teamwork and then asked to write a one sentence description in the chat box. The facilitator will summarize these, review relevant IP teamwork tools and demonstrate their use in participants’ cases.

2. Group 2: Humanism �" Participants will be given one minute to reflect on a personal story of caring for a vulnerable patient that was rewarding or challenging and will be asked to write a one sentence summary in the chat box. The facilitator will summarize these, review our Humanism Pocket Tool and demonstrate its use in at least one case.

3. Group 3: Clinician Well-being �" Participants will be given one minute to reflect on a personal work environment stressor. They will be asked to write a one sentence description in the chat box. The facilitator will summarize stressors mentioned, review relevant tools from our Well-being Toolkit and demonstrate their use to address the stressors reported by participants.

Large Group Discussion (15 minutes): Participants will be asked to reflect on and discuss changes in attitudes and feelings toward caring for vulnerable patients, and promoters and barriers to applying their selected tools at their home institution.