Parents’ Interpersonal Distance and Touch Behavior and Child Pain and Distress during Painful Pediatric Oncology Procedures

Children with cancer and their parents report that treatment-related procedures are more traumatic and painful than cancer itself. Competing hypotheses have emerged regarding relations between parents’ social support and child pain and distress. Little is known about caregivers’ use of nonverbal immediacy behaviors that may function as social support messages. This study describes caregivers’ interpersonal distance and touch behaviors during painful pediatric oncology procedures and examines relations between those behaviors and children’s pain and distress. Caregivers’ total touch time and instrumental (task-oriented) touch time, but not supportive touch time, during the actual procedure covaried with children’s procedural pain and distress. This research was conducted as part of a larger investigation funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute, “Parental Role in Pediatric Cancer Pain and Survivorship” (NCI R01 CA100027), Terrance L. Albrecht, PI. The authors wish to thank Ellen Jones for her efforts.     

New Field Instructors’ Perceptions of Institutional Supports for their Roles

Evidence indicates that the turnover of field instructors is high, thus threatening the quality and costs of social work education. To determine the factors that contribute to the high turnover rate, the authors surveyed new field instructors. The authors examined the influence of institutional supports offered by the practice setting and by the university on intention to continue and actual continuance, as well as intrinsic rewards and personal issues. The results contribute to an understanding of the career path of field instructors and suggest new short-term strategies to increase retention of field instructors. The authors conclude that the voluntary and somewhat precarious nature of university—agency partnerships for social work education needs to be reconsidered.     

Construct redundancy in leader behaviors: A review and agenda for the future

Leadership remains a popular and heavily researched area in the social sciences. Such popularity has led to a proliferation of new constructs within the leadership domain. Here, we argue that such construct proliferation without pruning is unhealthy and violates the principle of parsimony. Our purpose was to examine construct redundancy via a comprehensive review of task-oriented, relational, passive, and inspirational leader behaviors as well as values-based and moral leadership behaviors. Our findings, as indexed via meta-analytic correlations, reveal that construct redundancy remains problematic for the leadership literature. In addition, many of the values-based and moral behavior models correlated heavily with constructs traditionally examined as outcome variables (e.g., trust, LMX, justice). Implications for future research are discussed in regards to construct redundancy and how to avoid endogeneity bias in primary studies in the leadership literature.     

Community engagement in the Aboriginal Families Study: Strategies to promote participation

Background

Aboriginal women and families are under-represented in Australian research on pregnancy and childbirth. The Aboriginal Families Study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of a representative sample of women giving birth to an Aboriginal baby in South Australia between July 2011 and June 2013, using methods designed to respect Aboriginal culture and communities.

Hospice use by older adults knocking on the door of the nursing facility: implications for social work practice

Since 1983, federal funding has been available for hospice services. However, research studies have found that hospice is underutilized by people with terminal illnesses and their families. Low-income older adults are particularly at risk for underutilization. This study examined utilization of hospice services by nursing home applicants in one Midwestern state. Characteristics of users and non-users, and potential barriers to hospice use were examined. Findings further document that hospice is underutilized, especially by the Medicaid population, and point to barriers to hospice utilization. Specific recommendations are made to help practitioners increase hospice access.     

STRUCTURED MARITAL SEPARATION AS A MARITAL TREATMENT METHOD*

This article describes therapist-structured marital separation for distressed couples during their critical period of deciding whether to divorce or remain married. Characteristics of marital distress appropriate for structured marital separation are identified and discussed; potential benefits are explicated; and the design of the separation contract is specified. Issues addressed in the structure of the separation include the duration of the separation; the frequency of contact between partners; sexual contact between partners; dating; sexual contact with others; privacy; and contact with children.     

Creating Dialogic Contexts for Multidisciplinary Clinical Reviews: The Reflecting Team Process

When multidisciplinary teams review their work, it is common for clinicians to hypothesise about their clients from the perspective of their role or theoretical model. The outcome of this review process may depend on the team's views. Here the epistemological position taken by team members about reality and objectivity can lead to starkly different pathways. There can either be a dialogue about different hypotheses, with the team jointly constructing new meanings; or, conversely, there can be a monologic exchange based on competition between different hypotheses. This paper explores why teams may struggle with coordinating different theoretical approaches and models. It suggests the dialogic nature of a reflecting team process offers one approach for helping teams to find ways of ‘putting their differences to work’. Ideas for implementing this process within multidisciplinary teams are illustrated with comments provided by teams who have begun to experiment with this approach.