Burnout, viewed as the exhaustion of physical or emotional strength as a result of prolonged stress or frustration, was added to the mental health lexicon in the 1970s, and has been detected in a wide variety of health care providers. A study of 600 American workers indicated that burnout resulted in lowered production, and increases in absenteeism, health care costs, and personnel turnover. Many employees are vulnerable, particularly as the American job scene changes through industrial downsizing, corporate buyouts and mergers, and lengthened work time. Burnout produces both physical and behavioural changes, in some instances leading to chemical abuse. The health professionals at risk include physicians, nurses, social workers, dentists, care providers in oncology and AIDS-patient care personnel, emergency service staff members, mental health workers, and speech and language pathologists, among others. Early identification of this emotional slippage is needed to prevent the depersonalization of the provider-patient relationship. Prevention and treatment are essentially parallel efforts, including greater job control by the individual worker, group meetings, better up-and-down communication, more recognition of individual worth, job redesign, flexible work hours, full orientation to job requirements, available employee assistance programmes, and adjuvant activity. Burnout is a health care professional's occupational disease which must be recognized early and treated.

Burnout as a clinical entity—its importance in health care workers

Training programs committed to the development of culturally competent family therapists must discover ways to raise cultural awareness and increase cultural sensitivity. While awareness involves gaining knowledge of various cultural groups, sensitivity involves having experiences that challenge individuals to explore their personal cultural issues. This article outlines how the cultural genogram can be used as an effective training tool to promote both cultural awareness and sensitivity. To meet the demands of a changing world, it will be imperative for family therapy training programs to devote greater attention to preparing culturally competent therapists. Unfortunately, current efforts to prepare culturally competent therapists are skewed heavily toward promoting cultural “awareness” while neglecting the importance of cultural “sensitivity.” This occurs primarily through the use of multicultural training models that rely heavily on providing trainees with multicultural content, with far less emphasis upon promoting meaningful multicultural experiences. Although it is beneficial for trainees to receive exposure to content highlighting the unique aspects of various cultural groups, it is rare that such knowledge readily translates into sensitivity. The content-focused approach to multicultural education overemphasizes the characteristics of various cultural groups while ignoring the importance of the trainees’ perceptions of and feelings toward their respective cultural backgrounds. As a result, trainees are rarely challenged to examine how their respective cultural identities influence understanding and acceptance of those who are both culturally similar and dissimilar.

https://swrtc.nmsu.edu/files/2013/10/Cultural-genogram-hardy-laszloffy-1995.pdf

The Cultural Genogram Key to Training Culturally Competent Family Therapists

The field of social work expects practitioners remain well informed regarding research advances in their respective areas. Research studies conducted through the lens of qualitative inquiry provide important contributions to the social work knowledge base. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide practitioners some orientation regarding qualitative research methods and to highlight potential strategies researchers may use to enhance the trustworthiness and quality of their research. Specifically, the concept of trustworthiness is defined in the context of qualitative inquiry and questions social work practitioners can ask when evaluating the quality and applicability of a qualitative research study are provided.

/pdf/evaluating-qualitative-research-for-social-work-1rizfdwhxw.pdf

Evaluating Qualitative Research for Social Work Practitioners

Coping strategies and burnout among veteran child protection workers.

This article introduces a new qualitative spiritual assessment instrument. It reviews existing qualitative assessment tools and presents a new multidimensional spiritual assessment framework. The instrument consists of two components: a spiritual history in which consumers relate their spiritual life story in a manner analogous to a family history and an interpretive framework to assist practitioners in eliciting and synthesizing the full potentiality of strengths extant in clients' spiritual lives. Common spiritual strengths the framework is designed to evoke are discussed, and a number of interventions based on prevalent spiritual strengths are suggested.

Spiritual assessment: a review of major qualitative methods and a new framework for assessing spirituality

Two methods of diagramming family relationships offer insights into complex family and community interactions and facilitate the interviewing and intervention process

Diagrammatic Assessment of Family Relationships

Many Ways of Knowing

In Search of Subjugated Knowledge

In response to the important philosophical and methodological questions being asked in social work, this article presents a model for social work knowing that is founded on the tenets of critical theory synthesized with principles and practices from action research. The model provides the essential empirical support for social work interventions and outcomes and is consistent with the social work code of ethics and the social work profession's commitment to elimination of oppression. An example of the process, the Maine Adolescent Project, is used to illustrate the implementation of the model. Key words: participatory inquiry; research model As a profession committed to the empowerment of oppressed groups, social work has struggled with the role of scientific inquiry and the "correct" epistemology for social work (Anastas & MacDonald, 1994; DePoy & Gitlin, 1998; Reamer, 1993). However, during the past several decades, in the increasingly competitive human services climate, social workers have come to the realization that they must use research to examine the need for as well as to support the outcomes of practice. Although the role of research has been defined as an essential professional survival activity, the debate over what inquiry models best serve social workers and their mission continues. On one end of the epistemology debate is the view that quantitative and positivist approaches to inquiry are the most efficacious way to support practice need and outcome (Fischer, 1981). These approaches view research as a professional activity that is conceptualized, conducted, and used by professionals (Whyte, 1995). However, in addition and sometimes contrary to that perspective is the notion that social workers need to consider qualitative, naturalistic inquiry to capture the uniqueness, diversity, and complexity of the issues and client populations from their own perspective (Tutty, Rothery, & Grinnell, 1996). Moreover, the notion of knowledge as power adds another important dimension to the debate over epistemology by raising questions about who should generate, have access to, and determine the use of knowledge in the social work field (Finn, 1994; Kondrat, 1994; Kondrat & Julia, 1997; Whyte, 1995). In response to the important philosophical and methodological questions being asked in social work, this article presents a model for social work knowing founded on the tenets of critical theory synthesized with principles and practices from action research. We suggest that this model not only provides the essential empirical support for social work interventions and outcomes but also is consistent with the social work code of ethics and commitment to elimination of oppression. Theoretical and Philosophical Background As stated by Finn (1994), a major challenge facing social work is the "call for change-oriented, value-based models of knowledge development that address people, power and praxis" (p. 25). Thus, the qualitative-quantitative debate deservedly becomes obfuscated by the critical need to develop purposive models of knowing to serve oppressed populations by moving beyond the perpetuation of dominance and privilege by and for resource-rich groups. (Ervin, 1996; Finn). Critical theory and action research provide sound philosophical and methodological grounding for the development of a model to meet the need identified by Finn. Critical Theory As implied by the name, critical theory is not a research method but a worldview that suggests both an epistemology and a purpose for conducting research. Whether critical theory is a philosophical, political, or sociological school of thought has been debated in the contemporary literature. In essence, critical theory is a response to post-Enlightenment philosophies, positivism in particular, which "deconstructs" the notion of a unitary truth that can be known by one way or method. That is to say, critical theory is a movement that lives in the world of philosophy. …

Ann Hartman

Papers

Diagrammatic Assessment of Family Relationships

Diagrammatic Assessment of Family Relationships

Many Ways of Knowing

In Search of Subjugated Knowledge

Critical Action Research: A Model of Social Work Knowing