Co-Facilitation of an Occupational Therapy Group

I really enjoyed the experience of co-facilitating a group focused on cultivating a positive attitude. Going through the process from top to bottom by creating a complete group protocol, revising that protocol, and implementing it with our peers was a wonderful learning opportunity. For me, there were several experiences during this process that I found to be quite revealing and useful. For one, creating the protocol and basing our activities on a particular theory was very helpful. After discussing several theoretical bases, we finally chose Behavioral-cognitive, which most effectively allowed us to target our goals that dealt with identifying positive attributes about oneself and others, and identifying positive approaches one can implement when feeling negative thoughts encroaching. Being able to work through the pros and cons of basing our session on various theories was very helpful. During the group session, one of the more significant aspects of this experience was working with a co-facilitator. I lead a small group of high schoolers at my church alongside another advisor, so based on my experience doing this, I was able to transfer my skills of co-leading to this setting. I felt that we did a nice job of being able to seamlessly communicate and interact with the group. I also found it very helpful to be able to put our protocol into action. I liked that this mimicked a real-world scenario in that you do not know how your participants will react to the group meeting, and how you must rely on your therapeutic use of self and other "OT skills" in order to most effectively lead the group. Initially, I was unsure of how the group would respond to the activities we had chosen, but I no longer felt this way after everyone provided thoughtful answers during the ice breaker activity. Having had the opportunity to experience making a protocol and co-facilitating a group for my peers, I now have a better understanding of the more practical elements that go into facilitating an occupational therapy group.

Generally speaking, I thought we could have been more comprehensive when doing the group introductions. We should have been clearer about what expectations we had for the group as their leaders. Our activities were adequately prepared, but I do feel that our directions could have been a bit clearer, and given when the group members were fully attentive. We could have better supported our group members in the processing portion of group by helping them to probe deeper when trying to elicit their feeling about the session. Additionally, our summary portion of the group could have been a bit more articulate. I think we did a good job during the sharing, generalizing, group motivation, limiting of the setting, and application components of our session. Overall, I really enjoyed this learning opportunity and feel that though we had some areas that were stronger than others, we can certainly grow in all arears of facilitating an occupational therapy group.