Information about each breakout is below

8:00 AM
New Nephrology Social Workers Training with Vernon Silva 

9:30 AM: Break

9:40 AM  
Scary Things and Dialysis with Anne Pugh 

11:10 AM: Break

11:15 AM
 My Patients Came to All Their Treatments - How? with Vernon Silva

SOCIAL WORKER BREAKOUT SESSION
Tools, Techniques, and Strategies for a Successful and Effective Practice

New Nephrology Social Workers Training (1.5 hours)
This course was developed to offer attendees an extensive review of specific best practices as they relate to dialysis social work services. The multiple tips and take-aways will:
1. Hone participants’ clinical and concrete skills
2. Enhance application techniques for interventions, and
3. Broaden their documentation and resource toolbox for the purpose of implementing strategies in a fast-paced, culturally
diverse treatment setting.
Focus will be on efficient and effective methods of clinical case management (assessment, care planning, follow up) and meeting
deliverables (transplant log, KDQOL, depression screening) that maintain high professional and ethical standards.

Objectives:
1. Define and prioritize the duties and responsibilities of nephrology social work practice that are congruent with federal guidelines and company policy.
2. Implement multiple effective professional interventions to address the psychosocial aspects of kidney care that are evidence-based, outcome-driven, and patient-centered. 
3. Identify the essential skills and methods utilized in dialysis practice settings that support ethical requirements and a team approach. 

Scary Things and Dialysis (1.5 hours)
The newest ESRD Network 18 Patient Services Manager will discuss fear and the need to focus on violence prevention and risk assessment while learning and teaching coping, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills in dialysis units during these turbulent times.
The talk is geared towards an audience of social workers and facility leadership. The talk will be a combined lecture and interactive Case Scenario analysis in a Question and Answer format.
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Objectives:
To introduce the new CMS ESRD Network 18 Contractor, Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), and Patient Services Manager, Anne Pugh, LCSW, who will:
1. Briefly discuss recent violence, violence prevention and what some of the impacts of fear can be to a dialysis clinic and
2. How social workers and leadership need to promote and teach coping, risk assessment, critical thinking, decision-making, and violence skills in dialysis clinics.
3. Lead a Q and A discussion using case scenarios of challenging patient/provider situations that could pose the risk of IVD or other harms to the patient(s) and/or staff.

My Patients Came to All Their Treatments - How? (1.25 hours)
This course was developed to introduce attendees to an approach to addressing missed treatments. Included will be counseling interventions that were implemented during one calendar year at an ICHD clinic which yielded excellent results, and the ethical dilemmas that the social worker encountered by utilizing this method. The multiple tips and take-aways will hone participants’ clinical and concrete skills and enhance application techniques for interventions for the purpose of improving dialysis patients’ adherence behaviors.

Objectives include:
1. Identifying behavior trends and root causes contributing towards dialysis treatment noncompliance by incident as well as prevalent dialysis patients in an in-center setting
2. Identifying psychosocial interventions that support a proactive, preventative, and preemptive approach to dialysis treatment compliance that affects kidney patients’ decision-making process and adherence
3. Identifying ethical dilemmas driven by practicing in an evidence-based, outcome-driven environment.

Anne Frances Pugh, LCSW works in Patient Services at Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG) End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Network 18. She has more than 22 years of experience in healthcare, including 9 years as patient services for the ESRD Networks. She worked as a dialysis social worker for 13 years and has been working as a perinatal social worker for a nonprofit community hospital in Northern California for 21 years.

Ms. Pugh specializes in facilitating patient and family adjustment to changes in health status, with an emphasis on trauma informed care approaches. She helps clinical teams to improve their processes through practice redesign, including a focus on continuity of care, discharge planning, patient inclusion and empowerment, and the avoidance of hospitalization. She provides consultation services, mediation, and education to social workers, management. and staff in facilities to help them work through challenging patient-provider situations.

As the patient services manager for ESRD Network 18, she processes grievances from a patient population of 48,031 dialysis patients, 20,706 transplant patients, and 474 ESRD facilities. She leads quality improvement initiatives to meet the goals prescribed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and collaborates with other vested stakeholders to improve health for all ESRD patients in Southern California..

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Vernon Silva provides direct patient care at Toiyabe Dialysis Center (TDC) in Eastern California. He has 22 years of experience in dialysis including three in patient services for ESRD Networks 17 and 18, and has been with TDC since 2011. Mr. Silva specializes in clinical supervision of pre-licensed MSWs and is responsible for all those at American Renal Care. He conducts professional trainings and conference presentations, and performs volunteer work for kidney organizations.
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He also works as a psychotherapist for Path Mental Services specializing in adjustment and
coping skill building for depression, anxiety, grief, chronic illness, pain management, geriatrics, and LGBTQ-plus issues utilizing the following theoretical approaches: CBT, operant conditioning, motivational interviewing, narrative/psychodynamic, brief-solution focused therapy, crisis intervention, and trauma-informed care.

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