Interdisciplinary Prenatal Group Visits as a Significant Learning Experience

Abstract

Group visits offer documented benefit to patients and clinicians. They also provide an excellent venue to teach residents interdisciplinary care and group facilitation skills. Third-year residents received experiential training to provide prenatal care through group visits rather than one-on-one visits. A descriptive study is used to illustrate the effectiveness of various facets of resident skill acquisition and patient-centered prenatal care. Evaluation methods included feedback from patients, team members, learner self-reflection, and observation by a behavioral health clinician. Residents collaboratively provide prenatal care in a group model during a 6-month period. Interdisciplinary team members explicitly teach and model biopsychosocial whole-person care and effective communication. This inventive experience has increased resident competency-based skills in facilitation and effective team collaboration as measured through observation. These skills are directly applicable in future primary care medical home practice. Using a group visit model benefits patients and clinicians, and promotes enriching and effective resident education. Our model can easily be implemented in other programs.