MEETING SESSION PLAN

Meeting Session Plan- Nominal Group Technique

Meeting Session Plan- Nominal Group Technique

What is the goal of the session?

The purpose of a nominal group meeting is to gather the experiences of health-care staff and develop an action plan to tackle HIs. While this method is not, and should not substitute a root cause analysis, the nominal group technique does help to identify relevant underlying causes as perceived by key hospital actors. On this basis, an action plan can be developed.

How will the nominal group technique be used to achieve this goal?

Only conduct a nominal group meeting if staff is committed and able to openly discuss local safety issues; otherwise select a different method.

Include staff from all community building activities in the meeting.

Facility managers are not present during the meeting to ensure that participants express themselves as freely as possible, but management is briefed as soon as possible after the meeting to ensure ownership.

The facilitator proceeds with the meeting only after participants understand the definition of HIs and preventability and are clear on the meeting procedure.

Limit the number of HIs and contributing problems that each participant suggests according to the number of participants (one per participant if there are more than ten participants).

Do not invite more than fifteen participants for each meeting.

The facilitator helps participants to be specific and precise: the more precise the problem/solution, the easier it is to take action.

The facilitator should ensure that all participants can freely express their views and all relevant ideas are taken into account.

How will the members of the team work together (guidelines for effective participation)?

Five to twelve participants, who represent all hospital activities, meet together in a highly structured brainstorming session. Depending on the size of the health-care facility, one or several meetings are conducted, each of which is guided by a trained facilitator and based on comprehensive talking points.

What specific steps and tasks will be involved in achieving the goal?

The principal investigator, who organizes the meeting, starts preparing three weeks ahead of time and conducts steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 of the meeting preparation. (Bogdan, 1975)

The facilitator, who conducts the meeting and can be the same person as the principal investigator, starts preparing two weeks ahead of time and conducts steps 6 and 7 of the meeting preparation and all the steps relating to the conduct of the meeting.

Following is the explanation of the detailed tasks:

Advertise group meeting of three - four hours. (Calder, 1977)

Select participants to ensure a mix of interests/community groups/social levels/age/gender, etc.

Hire facilitator skilled in nominal group meeting process. Success of the process depends on thorough preparation by the facilitator.

Leaders should clarify the questions to be asked, considering what key information they need. Pre-test the question before the meeting. Emotional (likes/dislikes, etc.) information must be asked for directly. (Bellenger, 1976)

For larger groups, organise into subgroups (seven-nine people) on the same or different topics, depending on the range of issues.

The facilitator should follow the full step-by-step process, which ...