Letters to the Editor

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Dear Editor,

In the Fall 2005 issue Roundtable Discussion: Transfer of Successful Practices, in the section: On The Permanente Journal as a Connector, Arthur Huberman, MD, mentioned: "TPJ may be most useful as an adjunct to help connect people, to raise awareness of things that can be used. Some people just need to read something and then they go do it, some people need to talk to others, and some people need to go see it." Tom Janisse, MD, responded, "Yes, and journal articles have also been used as support devices for transfer when they are used as data or evidence and added in reference lists."

I can add a personal experience supporting this. In getting our psychiatrists to embrace group visits for patients getting stabilized on meds--not just "clinics," which are corrals from which patients are picked off one at a time, but truly interactive groups in which patients help each other identify acute changes and successes while getting settled into one of our chronic care pathways--one of the decisive validators I used was the TPJ series on group medical visits, which brought not just evidence but prestige and authority into the recipe. (Thank you!) The other decisive factor was the promise of a clinician who does group work regularly as a coleader.

Betram Barth, LCSW
Kaiser Permanente
Sacramento Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry