Clinical social work education in palliative and end-of-life care: relational approaches for advanced practitioners

This paper describes the first post-Master's program in the US in end-of-life care for social workers. Developed at the Smith College School for Social Work, this program used innovative relational methods in student recruitment, curricular design, supervision, and leadership development, based upon input from the faculty, students, and field supervisors. Collaborations emerged with funders, agencies, and programs nationally. The program was based on a pedagogical stance that clinical work with dying people requires the capacity to be fully present- in individual, group, and family work; in interdisciplinary meetings; and in advocating for quality and equity of care-while attending to diverse and at-risk populations. Students deepened their clinical skills and took leadership in the field of end-of-life care.     

The Interdisciplinary Geriatric/Gerontological Team in the Academic Setting

Geriatric health care requires the services of an interdisciplinary health care team to assess, treat and order the social service needs of the older person, and this concept needs to be included in geriatric social work education. But while the necessity of interdisciplinary team care is recognized, little focus has been placed on the actual process of developing a functional team. The issues that arise-disparate terminologies, organizational and administrative differentials, turf-and the steps needed for a team to become viable are described, using an interdisciplinary team based in academia as a case model. The academic interdisciplinary team may easily become a forum for 'hot air' rather than a catalyst for good practice. This danger is reviewed with reference to stages in the interdisciplinary team development-- goal development group affiliation; team awareness; and goal evaluation. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the impact of the interdisciplinary team on faculty, students and the academic setting.     

The Impact of Prison Hospice

Abstract

This study reports on a qualitative national telephone survey with coordinators of 14 prison hospice programs in 11 states. The rationale behind the survey was to learn about interdisciplinary collaboration between social work and criminal justice, using prison hospice as an exemplar of this collaboration. In addition to learning that all prison hospices in the study operate using an interdisciplinary team model and that most report high quality collaboration on the hospice team, the following additional five themes emerged: administrators and wardens are very supportive while correctional staff provides mixed support to team and program; greater collaboration with those outside prison hospice is critical; collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on dying prisoners; collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on prisoner volunteers; and, collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on the entire culture of the prison.     

The impact of prison hospice: collaboration among social workers and other professionals in a criminal justice setting that promotes care for the dying

This study reports on a qualitative national telephone survey with coordinators of 14 prison hospice programs in 11 states. The rationale behind the survey was to learn about interdisciplinary collaboration between social work and criminal justice, using prison hospice as an exemplar of this collaboration. In addition to learning that all prison hospices in the study operate using an interdisciplinary team model and that most report high quality collaboration on the hospice team, the following additional five themes emerged: administrators and wardens are very supportive while correctional staff provides mixed support to team and program; greater collaboration with those outside prison hospice is critical; collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on dying prisoners; collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on prisoner volunteers; and, collaboration through prison hospice has a positive impact on the entire culture of the prison.     

American Indian studies and its evolution in academia

This article traces the progression of American Indian Studies programs and the discipline's evolution in academia. Our research is divided into three sections. The first describes the era of the turbulent 1960s, when programs began and struggled to assert themselves as worthy of independent intellectual status. The second part focuses on American Indian studies programs' efforts to continue maturing as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. This section includes a discussion of the evolving methods, theories, and concepts used for analysis and research concerning the diversity of American Indian cultures. There were certain structural, personnel, and curriculum problems which presented themselves along the road to academic maturity, some of which remain. The final section suggests characteristics necessary for an ideal American Indian studies program into the 21st century.     

The relationship between social work and environmental sustainability: Implications for interdisciplinary practice

Schmitz CL, Matyók T, James C, Sloan LM. The relationship between social work and environmental sustainability: Implications for interdisciplinary practice The Brundtland Commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development, established by the United Nations in 1983, links peace, security, development and the environment claiming that war, poverty and structural violence result in the oppression and degradation of the human community as well as the physical environment. Likewise, human rights and social and environmental justice are intertwined, and social work, as a profession that collaborates across disciplines and within communities, is uniquely situated to provide leadership in the field of environmental studies. Its strong focus on human rights, social justice and community building creates a sound base from which to engage in the collaborative, creative, interactional processes required for environmental practice. This article seeks to discern a model for environmental social work within the context of interdisciplinary practice with peace and conflict workers and through the integration of inclusive models of economic development.     

Overcoming Obstacles to Cooperation in Interdisciplinary Long Term Care Teams

This paper outlines several common problem areas in long term care interdisciplinary teams: the team's institutional context, leadership, goals, communications, and relationships within the teams. Suggestions made for circumventing or overcoming identified obstacles include: assessing organizational support, adopting a more constructive conceptualization of leadership, exercises for reaching goal consensus, and several team development activities addressing communication and relationships among team members.     

The Use of Single Session Collectivities with Families of Spina Bifida Children

Social workers who work with families of spina bifi- da children may find the single session collectivity a useful alterna- tive to conventional treatment when the provision of traditional social work groups is impractical. This article describes the charac- teristics of single session collectivities with this population, their uses, and the role and focus of the worker in such entities. The coop- eration of an interdisciplinary team is an in~portant component in the development of successful collectivities.     

互联网与抗争行动：理论模型、中国经验及研究进展

互联网的出现对抗争行动产生了显著的影响,关于互联网与抗争行动的研究也逐年增多。由于这些研究分散于不同学科,不同研究之间缺乏相对统一的理论框架,从而妨碍了研究的进一步发展。笔者对相关的文献进行回顾与梳理,归纳了互联网影响抗争行动的三种不同的理论模型。此外,本文还回顾了在中国情景下的研究成果,包括互联网与抗争行动、市民社会发育等议题。在此基础上,作者最后对今后可能的研究方向进行了简要的讨论。     

Interdisciplinary Geriatric Education

There is an absence of adequately trained social workers to meet the health and social service needs of a rapidly increasing aging population. Educators face the challenge of helping social workers in the field both to upgrade their gerontological knowledge and skills and to become functioning members of the emerging modality-the interdisciplinary care team. A historical review of gerontological social work education suggests that 'first generation' education programs based on a medical model of intervention gave way to the 'second generation' in which aging was viewed as a normative step in the life cycle. Currently gerontological social work education is entering the 'third generation' in which emphasis is on working with members of other disciplines to provide comprehensive care. This interdisciplinary geriatric health care is most readily taught as a continuing education, postgraduate experience. This 'third generation' of gerontological social work education is exemplified by the experience of the Hunter/Mount Sinai Geriatric Education Center. Interdisciplinary geriatric health care requires teaching by an interdisciplinary team and, to be effective, educators must themselves be equipped to function as member of the team. Barriers to interdisciplinary understanding and the factors necessary for interdisciplinary collaboration are detailed.     

Dworkin's moral hermeneutics and sociological theory

As a leading contemporary legal theorist, Ronald Dworkin has been consequential and provocative with respect to the development of jurisprudence. This study selectively applies the general principles of Dworkin's work first to Max Weber's argument for the use of ideal types in the theory construction of social inquiry and then to Talcott Parsons's critique of utilitarianism as a viable theory of social action. The aim is to invigorate, from the vantage point of an interdisciplinary perspective, our understanding of the moral origins of sociological theory.     

Sociological Problems of Sexual Morality

Today, with the new stage in development of our society — the process of building communism — the study of man in the USSR has gone far beyond the confines of the special disciplines and has become an interdisciplinary problem for a number of social and natural sciences. Therefore it will be readily understood that the social problems of sexual relationships must be studied. This explains the considerable attention given to that problem in the literature of sociology and social psychology (in the works of I. S. Kon, A. G. Kharchev, V. N. Kolbanovskii, and others).     

Embodied viewing and Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: a multi-disciplinary experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a cross-disciplinary project based on an experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture (Sainsbury’s Centre for Visual Arts), which aimed to study viewers’ movements around an iconic sculpture: Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The experiment studies how viewers respond to this three-dimensional artwork not only by looking at it but also through their own bodily reactions to it, such as by unconsciously mimicking a represented attitude or gesture. We compared two groups of viewers: classically trained dancers and non-dancers. Our hypothesis was that the skills and embodied experiences of the dancers would alter the ways in which they engage bodily with the work compared to the non-dancers. Our underlying research question was: how are vision and the body interlinked in esthetic and kinesthetic experience? This paper does not give results, which are forthcoming. It focuses on methodology and provides a commentary on the design and development of the interdisciplinary collaboration behind the project. It explores an interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges the humanities and experimental sciences and asks how being confronted with unfamiliar methodologies forces researchers in a given field to critically self-examine the limits and presuppositions of their practices.     

Five-Year Follow-Up Study of the Qualitative Experiences of Youth in an Afterschool Arts Program in Low-Income Communities

ABSTRACT

Semistructured follow-up interviews were conducted with 32 Canadian youth ages 14 to 20 years old; 5 years prior, these youth had participated in a structured arts program. Given that little is known about the long-term effects of afterschool arts-based programs, interviews took a qualitative approach to delineate adolescents’ experiences with the program and their subsequent development. The findings from the qualitative interviews suggest that skill acquisition, positive staff-youth relationships, development of team building, positive peer relationships, a sense of belonging, and program flexibility were pertinent to sustained positive youth development 5 years following program completion. This article discusses the importance of follow-up studies and implications for future research and practice.     

Home-Based Palliative Care Study

Abstract

Purpose: To examine differences in site of death and costs of services by primary diagnosis for patients receiving home-based palliative care as compared to usual care at the end of life verity of illness, service use, and site of death.

Design and Methods: A nonequivalent group design was employed with 298 terminally ill patients diagnosed with cancer, CHF, or COPD enrolled. The treatment group received an interdisciplinary home-based palliative care program and the comparison group received usual Kaiser Permanente services. Data collected included patient demographics, se-

Results: Among all diseases, patients enrolled in palliative care were more likely to die at home. Enrollment in palliative care was significant associated with cost reductions for patients with cancer, COPD, and CHF. No significant difference was found between diagnostic groups in terms of magnitude of cost savings.

Implications: Provision of interdisciplinary home-based palliative care at end of life can effectively increase the likelihood of dying at home for patients with CHF, COPD, and cancer while realizing significant COSt savings.     

Socioeconomic Problems in the Industrialization of Agricultural Production

The Twenty-fourth Party Congress emphasized that the approach to the solution of problems relating to the development of agricultural production, elaborated by the March (1965) Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, lies in the creation of stable economic conditions for the development of agriculture, with due regard to the entire complex of factors that influence it. This approach was the basis for the elaboration of a broad program of agricultural development and for the implementation of this program.     

试论科技创新的方法和制度

根据科学发展史的大量事例,试图说明现代科技创新需要在一个开放的系统中,通过学科间交叉渗透来实现;涉及国民经济命脉的、事关全局的科技创新需要一个强有力的计划体制来保证。     

Honorary Authorship Practices in Environmental Science Teams: Structural and Cultural Factors and Solutions

Overinclusive authorship practices such as honorary or guest authorship have been widely reported, and they appear to be exacerbated by the rise of large interdisciplinary collaborations that make authorship decisions particularly complex. Although many studies have reported on the frequency of honorary authorship and potential solutions to it, few have probed how the underlying dynamics of large interdisciplinary teams contribute to the problem. This article reports on a qualitative study of the authorship standards and practices of six National Science Foundation-funded interdisciplinary environmental science teams. Using interviews of the lead principal investigator and an early-career member on each team, our study explores the nature of honorary authorship practices as well as some of the motivating factors that may contribute to these practices. These factors include both structural elements (policies and procedures) and cultural elements (values and norms) that cross organizational boundaries. Therefore, we provide recommendations that address the intersection of these factors and that can be applied at multiple organizational levels.     

Treating Older Persons with Severe Mental Illness in the Community: Impact of an Interdisciplinary Geriatric Mental Health Team

Little information is available concerning community-based interventions to treat the growing number older persons with severe mental illness. This study examined treatment efficacy of a specialized interdisciplinary geriatric mental health team (mental health geriatric interdisciplinary teams or MHGITs) for 69 older clients with severe mental disorders. Depression, life satisfaction, health, and psychiatric and medical hospitalization data were gathered. A decrease in depressive symptoms and in psychiatric hospitalizations, and an increase in life satisfaction at 6 months were found. No change in health nor medical hospitalizations were reported. This study provides preliminary support for the feasibility and efficacy of a MGHIT approach in treating older community-dwelling adults with severe mental illnesses. Implications for social workers are discussed.