The Northwestern Memorial Hospital Living Donor Kidney Program, Chicago
Interview done with Jami Hanneman, MSW, LSW
The organ transplant program is complex, sometimes bittersweet and always fascinating. Last year more than half of the kidney transplants done at Northwestern were live kidney donations. Read more . . .
|
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
. . . George Eliot
|
Nathalie Pouponneau, LMSW
Social Work p.r.n.'s New York Coordinator
Nathalie was born in Haiti and moved with her family to the United States when she was eight years old. The family moved to Queens, New York to live with Haitian relatives that sponsored them. All of the family members took English lessons in the evening. Nathalie remembers her uncle being very instrumental in . . .
Read more . . .
|
January is typically a great month to reorganize, repurpose, and recyle.
Consider exploring Freesharing.org, locally owned grassroots groups throughout the country working to help their neighbors and the environment by keeping usable items out of the landfill and passing them along to people who can use them. If you are not sure if you can part with any of your stuff, they have an 8-step program for pack rats, called Pack Rats Anonymous.
|
Pay it Forward
Backyard Bounty is a grass roots campaign bringing communities together in a life-giving way by connecting home owners who have f ruit trees with food pantries by donating their extra fruit. They also enjoy educating home owners on how to plant fruit trees in their own yards bringing healthy and financial benefits for their families to enjoy. The extras may be preserved or passed forward to those in need.
Located in Kansas City, Backyard Bounty campaign manager, Lori Neely, would love to spread this concept of giving to other communities across the country. Winter is a good time to germinate the "seed" of this great idea in your own community! Be a person who makes a difference.
For more information on this model of sharing, contact Lori Neely at: lorin@backyardbountykc.org.
www.BackyardBountyKC.org
|
|
|
Welcome to the Social Work p.r.n. Quarterly E-Newsletter! Please check out our featured articles. For more information, visit our website at: www.socialworkprn.com
|
Online Social Work Education - a current trend
|
Growth in online education outpaces traditional enrollment by more than 14%.
Online education continues to be a popular option for students who are returning to school or augmenting their higher education plan. According to the Sloan Consortium, online enrollment in 2009 grew to 4.6 million students, up 17% from 2008 figures. This growth well outpaces the 1.2% enrollment growth in traditional classroom based education programs. More than one of every four college students takes at least one online course and nearly three-fourths of the study's 2,500 higher education institution respondents indicated that demand for existing online education opportunities has increased. Two-thirds of higher education respondents said that demand for new online programs has increased at their institutions while only 54% reported that demand for existing traditional classroom instruction has increased.
According to the survey, respondents are more likely to indicate that graduate-level online programs are a critical component of their long-term growth strategies. This compares to about one-third of four-year institutions that see online learning as critical to their long-term growth. Ironically, the vast majority of students who take online courses are classified as undergraduate learners. In 2009, about 644,000 students (14% of all online learners) were enrolled in post-graduate online programs.
The range of online degree programs is impressive and includes . . .
read more
|
|
Honoring Life: The challenges and best practices in serving Jewish elders and Holocaust survivors
|
Written by Jenni Frumer, MSEd, LCSW, LMHC, NCG Contrary to popular belief, the number of Holocaust survivors needing care and services is not dwindling. The median age of a Holocaust survivor is eighty-four. Child survivors and Hidden Children are amongst the fastest growing segment of the Jewish community of Holocaust survivors, now in their mid-seventies. There are over 100,000 Holocaust survivors nationwide; at least 15% residing in Florida. Holocaust survivors tend not to "self-identify" and many have spent post-war years ensuring that they "stay under the radar", propagated by the "conspiracy of silence" that overshadowed this dark period of history for at least 50 years. Cultural competency is a critical practice standard when working with older adults and this is of special consideration with those who work with victims of trauma. Healthcare organizations and services need to be able to provide additional training, supervision and support to professionals, to enhance the capacity of an organization to respond to the unique needs of victims of genocide. Friendly consumer access and agency responsiveness are important features of a culturally competent organization, especially for victims of trauma who, by the very nature of their experience, are fearful and do not trust . . . Read more |
|
"Social Work is key to quality patient care."
Read Dr. Ken Covinsky's blog
|
In 1927, Francis Peabody remarked that, "The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient."
Medicine has made much progress since those days, but some might argue that some of the humanitarian cornerstones of caring that concerned Peabody have been lost. Of course, there are many health professionals that still embody this caring ethic. And in today's era, perhaps the group that best personifies this central caring ethic of medicine are medical social workers.
I know we should avoid generalizations, but isn't it the case that all social workers are nice? Perhaps it is this niceness, combined with their knowledge and skills that makes them so indispensable. The social worker on the team that understands what is really going on with the patient and identifies the key details that make it possible to effectively care for them. They know what to ask, and patients and families are comfortable confiding in them.
Geriatrics practice would be impossible without social workers. I definitely see this in our geriatrics clinic. Many patients are referred to geriatrics because things seem to be falling apart in terms of their ability to function independently at home. After I do the initial evaluation, I have to admit that I sometimes feel kind of bewildered. There is almost never a single underlying cause of the patient's problems - as the Fiddler on the Roof song goes, it is a little bit of this, a little bit of that (or perhaps a lot of this and a lot that). There is always a complex interaction of medical, social, and environmental factors that can not be separated from each other.
So, after I do my initial evaluation, I politely excuse myself from the exam room and knock on the door of our social worker, Karen. She somehow always has time for my unannounced visit to discuss the patient, often even adding the patient that day to her overbooked schedule. After talking through the issues with her, what was bewildering starts to become clear, and we are able to start formulating a plan for the patient. I end up returning to the exam room more confident we will be able to come up with a plan that will help the patient.
Can you believe there are still doctors who will dismissively refer to some patient issues (usually psychosocial issues) with a comment such as, "that's social work." The tone often implies they think the issue is not their problem, or even worse, they think addressing the issue is beneath them. Perhaps we should continue to encourage physicians to remark, "that's social work," but train our students to know that means they are dealing with something of particular importance that will take great skill to manage.
I know very little about the structure of social work training. However, it seems efforts to improve medical education could learn something from social work training. Social workers tend to be better than most physicians at communicating with patients, and many patients are more comfortable talking to a social worker than their doctor. The ability of social workers to uncover key elements of the history that physicians fail to identify suggests we can learn some basic skills of physicianship from them. It sure seems we would be better doctors if more elements of social work training were included in our training.
Given the importance of the medical social worker, you would think this would be a well paid position. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary of medical social workers is only $46,000 per year. Only 10% earn over $70,000 per year. This seems strikingly low for a position that requires extensive education (many social workers have masters degrees), requires very high level skill and judgment and is so indispensable.
Is this because social work tends to attract individuals committed to helping others and who are therefore less concerned with monetary rewards? Is it because social workers are so focused on others that they are less effective at negotiating their compensation? Or is this the legacy of workplace gender discrimination, as historically, women have been more likely to enter social work than men.
March was Social Work Month 2010. This year's them was, "Social Workers Inspire Community Action." But day in and day out, social workers make things better for our patients. In truth, every month is social work month.
Kenneth Covinsky is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who blogs at GeriPal.
(printed with permission)
|
|
We love your input
| |
Visit us on Facebook!
|
|
|
|
|
