A Successful Debrief Program for House Staff

Challenging end-of-life encounters can be stressful and may lead to burnout. Monthly debriefing sessions are led by a physician and clinical social worker (LCSW). Sessions focus on experiences and emotional reactions rather than case details. Themes identified included; feeling unsupported after difficult deaths, identifying with patients emotionally, and conceptualizing a “good” versus “bad” death. Debriefing provides opportunities for residency physicians to reflect on the affective side of their work and helps promote resiliency.     

Enquiry and action learning in practice placements

A new approach to social work education is described (Enquiry and Action Learning), and its application to practice placements and practice teaching is explored. A structure for planning and evaluating students' work on placement is given and their use in a Practice Learning Centre discussed.     

Caregiver role strain of older workers

The purpose of this study was to measure role strain in older adult workers who were also caregivers of frail elders according to Komarovsky's role strain theory, and to determine whether different patterns of role strain exist for male worker-caregivers than females. METHOD: Researchers developed the Job-Caregiver Role Strain Scale Survey, which was adapted from a survey that measured role strain in working parents and spouses. Surveys were distributed to 11 male and 34 female older workers who were also caregivers. RESULTS: A factor analysis was completed, which isolated four factors of role strain. Researchers named the factors time management and arrangements, health and competing role demands, low rewards, and reactions to perceptions. Role strain in older adult worker-caregivers is complex and involves multiple variables. A discriminant function analysis predicted differences in the way older male and female worker-caregivers perceived role strain. Use of role strain theory can assist employers and occupational therapists in developing and maintaining work environments that support not only the older employee's work performance, but participation in the role of elder caregiver as well.     

The Role of Social Infrastructure in Achieving Inclusive Liveable Communities: Voices from Regional Australia

What makes liveable communities inclusive is an important question for planning research, policy and practice, yet one that has not received significant attention. This article explores this question through the lived experiences of two spatially marginalised groups – people with disabilities and seniors. Using the photovoice technique, the findings visually and textually demonstrate the importance of universally accessible social infrastructure in enabling inclusion and active participation in a community in regional Australia. The findings suggest that inclusion should be a central focus of liveability, along with co-design processes with people experiencing spatial marginalisation to achieve inclusive liveable communities.     

EXPOsing Men's Gender Role Attitudes as Porn Superfans

Much contemporary debate about pornography centers on its role in portraying and perpetuating gender inequality. This article compares traditional gendered attitudes between cisgender men attending the Adult Entertainment Expo (n = 294) and a random sample of male respondents from the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS), a U.S. representative survey of general attitudes and beliefs collected every two years (n = 863). Our survey borrowed questions from the GSS to measure attitudes about gender equality across four dimensions: (1) working mothers, (2) women in politics, (3) traditional gender roles in the family, and (4) affirmative action for women in the workplace. Through bivariate analyses, we found that “porn superfans” are no more sexist or misogynistic than the general U.S. public on two of the four measures (women in politics and women in the general workplace) and held more progressive gender‐role attitudes than the general public on the other two measures. We conducted binary logistic regressions for those two measures to determine if the relationship remained significant when controlling for other factors. For one dimension, working mothers, it did (p < .001). Our results call into question some of the claims that porn consumption fosters de facto negative and hostile attitudes toward women.