Team Huddles Guide

This team huddles guide is focused on finding strategies for quickly planning and re-planning the day’s activities to maximize communication and coordination. Every clinic has a schedule for the day, but it’s often rare that the schedule goes as planned. Huddles help teams to be more proactive, efficient and patient-centered. They can be performed daily, weekly or as needed. You may wish to run a PDSA (Plan, Do Study, Act) cycle with your team to determine the best huddle frequency and approach.

Huddles are typically:

• Brief (10 minutes long)
• Planned for first thing in the morning (NOTE: some clinics choose to huddle again after lunch)
• Focused (everyone knows the purpose of the huddle ahead of time)
• Done while standing (at an EMR, if applicable)
• Standardized (same time and place) every day, and/or
• Scheduled ‘as needed’ (e.g. PDSA update, review of critical incident or event, etc.)
• Inclusive – every team member present is encouraged to actively participate

Examples of huddle topics:

• Team check-in – who is here/not here today? Special concerns or acknowledgements, etc.
• Which patients are booked today? Any cancellations?
• What can be prepared ahead of time and by whom? (e.g., pull in results from Netcare, set up for pap,)
• Is there any important information the whole team should know? (e.g. patient is grieving)
• Contingency planning to manage the day when a team member is off sick or on vacation
• What can be done opportunistically? For example:
  • ‘Screening appointment’ coming up (provide with requisitions in advance)
  • Patient is due or overdue for preventive screening (no screening appointment booked)
  • Prescription renewal coming up – consider taking care of today
  • Care plan needs follow-up
  • An appointment with a team member would be helpful (e.g. pharmacist for a med reconciliation) – engage and book

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