Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness

Chapter 13 The Interdisciplinary Treatment Team 255
team and arriving at appropriate treatment/care decisions for the older
people they serve. Table 13.1 also provides citations for each of the activities
listed so the reader can explore further these interdisciplinary team
process methods.
Team Development
Team development begins with a combination of traditional group dynamics
approaches and human relations training. Traditional group dynamics
approaches include the following: training in establishing goals and a core
mission for the team, role definition /negotiation training, shared /rotating
leadership exercises, and training in prioritizing team concerns. The team
development exercises involved with role definition and role negotiation
are continuous and ongoing as the team gains and loses members.
Team Management
The team management activities listed in Table 13.1 can be used as tools
to help the team continue to work together more effectively once it has
developed cohesion. Two team management exercises that focus on disaster
preparedness have been particularly successful with specialized teams:
Systematic Team Evidence-Based Problem Solving (STEPS) and Team
Problem-Solving Scenarios. STEPS is a seven-stage process that incorporates
an evaluative component. The evaluative component is designed to
help the team, whenever possible and appropriate, choose evidence-based
solutions shown to be successful in the scientific literature.
The Problem-Solving Scenarios, described here, constitute a problemsolving
game simulation in which team members work out solutions for
typical disaster-related problems faced by the team.
Table 13.2 describes a sample STEPS disaster preparedness problemsolving
exercise that was conducted at the annual Geriatric Scholar Certificate
Program in Binghamton, New York, in June 2007. The Geriatric
Scholar Certificate Program is a component of the curriculum of the
CNYGEC, which has been funded by the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, Bureau of Health Professions, Health Services, and
Resource Administration since 1994. The curriculum has trained teams in
the methods of STEPS for over 12 years.