Abstract
Huddles are brief, time-limited, focused meetings to help organize and support clinical teams. Huddles have demonstrated their value and transferable benefits across a range of settings. Based on their transferable nature, their potential could be unacknowledged as a clinical implementation technique, particularly in specific subgroups of patients with anorexia who need a higher level of care. An innovative clinical pathway aimed at supporting autistic patients with eating disorders (PEACE Pathway) evaluated the use of weekly PEACE huddles for the multidisciplinary team as part of the implementation process across a 12-months period. A total of 283 responses evaluated the huddle as useful on average 84/100. Using content analysis, several perceived benefits were found of the huddles which were in line with the underpinnings of traditional huddles, suggesting that huddles are transferable as implementation techniques, as evidence by a team providing higher-level care for eating disorders.
Highlights
Huddles can be defined as brief, regular meetings aimed at keeping team members informed, actively evaluating and maintaining procedures, goal setting, and thinking about future directions [1]
This paper looked at how useful weekly huddles are as an implementation technique in implementing an innovative pathway in a multi-disciplinary mental health service
The data suggest that weekly huddles for quality improvement implementation were well-received and useful, both face-to-face and virtually
Summary
Huddles can be defined as brief, regular meetings aimed at keeping team members informed, actively evaluating and maintaining procedures, goal setting, and thinking about future directions [1]. Huddles have been used successfully in mental health-related concerns in dementia care with improvements in collaboration, teamwork, support and discussing specific behaviors [9]. With such translatable benefits, huddles are potentially a very important implementation strategy when rolling out clinical innovation in mental health services. Identifying and evaluating strategies for implementation increases the chances of successfully implementing clinical innovation. Implementation science is developing theory-based knowledge about implementation techniques
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