Subject(s)
Delivery of Health Care/organization & administration , Healthcare Disparities , Sexuality/statistics & numerical data , Social Work/organization & administration , Bisexuality , Capacity Building/methods , Capacity Building/organization & administration , Delivery of Health Care/methods , Female , Homosexuality, Female , Homosexuality, Male , Humans , Male , Sexuality/psychology , Social Work/methods , TranssexualismABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Given that 71% of caregivers nationally report that they are caring for someone with a long-term or chronic illness, providing support to families-from diagnosis to the bereavement phase--is essential. PURPOSE: This paper describes an exploratory assessment of a hospital-based support program for family caregivers, the Caregivers and Professionals Partnership (CAPP) Caregiver Resource Center. The goal of the program evaluation was to understand the challenges facing caregivers who used the Center, how social workers intervened and the results of their interventions. Authors suggest that caregivers benefit from social work interventions that focus both on the emotional impact of caregiving and the multiple resource issues caregivers face. METHODS: Social workers assisted more than half of participating caregivers with emotional coping issues as well as referrals to community resources. In approximately 75% of cases, social workers followed up with caregivers to engage them in services and ensure that they received ongoing support. FINDINGS: From the perspective of Resource Center social workers, their interventions enhanced caregivers' abilities to cope with their responsibilities. CONCLUSIONS: Supporting caregivers over time and following up to ensure that they access needed services are critical ways to help them cope with care of a loved one. Future research can focus on how to engage caregivers who are isolated or too overwhelmed to ask for help in order to increase their use of caregiver assistance programs.
Subject(s)
Caregivers/psychology , Chronic Disease/nursing , Social Support , Adaptation, Psychological , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Female , Hospitals , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Program EvaluationABSTRACT
This research project investigated the extent to which nurses engage in two important kinds of ethical behaviours: ethical activism (where they try to make hospitals more receptive to nurses' participation in ethics deliberations) and ethical assertiveness (where they participate in ethics deliberations even when not formally invited). This research probed not only the extent to which nurses engage in these ethical behaviours but also whether this is influenced by professional, training and organizational factors. A random sample of 165 nurses from three major hospitals in Los Angeles provided the data. Regression analyses indicate that both ethical activism and ethical assertiveness are strongly influenced by nurses' perceptions of the receptivity of hospitals to their inclusion in ethics deliberations. In addition, nurses' education in ethics is a significant predictor of ethical activism. The findings have important implications for the content of nurses' ethics training as well as for expanding the boundaries of nurses' participation in ethics deliberations. The authors define ethics deliberations as specific meetings of a number of people to discuss an ethical issue, such as one regarding the care of a patient.
Subject(s)
Ethics, Nursing , Nurse's Role , Nursing Care/ethics , Nursing Care/statistics & numerical data , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Assertiveness , Data Collection , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Patient Participation , Perception , Random Allocation , Regression, Psychology , Surveys and Questionnaires , Teaching , United StatesABSTRACT
Little empirical research examines the extent medical social workers try to change attitudes, norms, expectations, and protocols to create a hospital environment that encourages their participation in ethical deliberations. The researchers developed an ethical activism scale that measured the extent medical social workers engaged in such ethical activism, confirming its reliability from data obtained from a sample of 162 medical social workers in 37 hospitals in the Los Angeles basin. They tested seven hypotheses that probed the extent specific ethics-training, organizational, and demographic variables influence the extent social workers engage in ethical activism. Data strongly suggest the need to expand ethics training to include tactics of ethical activism, since many social workers do not engage in ethical activism. Data also suggest the need to target such training to social workers in hospitals that are relatively unreceptive to social workers' participation in ethical deliberations, since social workers are least likely to engage in ethical activism in such settings.
