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.     

A Temp in Life A Discussion of Deborah Waxenberg's “On Not Being Supposed To”

A discussion of Deborah Waxenberg's clinical case presentation of a woman with severe inhibitions in work, in intimate relationships, and in the realm of sexuality. The case material is considered in terms of its impact on a reader/listener as a way to consider parallel process in treatment and in supervision. Questions of gender identity, of sexual orientation, and enactment and its sequelae are addressed, along with questions of the patient's narcissism in relation to her experience and representation of her parental imagoes.     

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.     

Access to Interprofessional Continuing Education in Integrated Care Through Digital Instructional Technology

ABSTRACT

In preparing the workforce for integrated care, continuing professional education serves a critical role. Within a rapidly changing health care landscape, matriculated students now benefit from pedagogical innovations supporting integrated care, particularly interprofessional education, and working professionals must not be excluded from this transformation. University-based digital instructional programs can support the learning needs of working professionals, providing an alternative and complement to brick-and-mortar classrooms and ad hoc onsite trainings. This paper describes the structure, content, digital approach, and outcomes of a continuing education program in integrated behavioral health and primary care, housed in a school of social work at a major university. The challenges of interprofessional digital education are described and future directions are suggested.     

Legislators of the world

In ‘The Defence of Poetry’ 1821, Shelley claimedthat ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of theworld’. This has been taken to suggest that simply byvirtue of composing verse, they exert some exemplary moral power,in a vague unthreatening way. In fact, in his earlier politicalessay, ‘A Philosophic View of Reform’, he had writtenthat ‘Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged’,etc. The philosophers, he was talking about, were revolutionary-minded:Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Voltaire and Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition, Shelley was, no mistake, out to change the legislationof his time. For him, there was no contradiction between poetry,political philosophy and active