Patient satisfaction or dissatisfaction is a complicated phenomenon that is linked to patients' expectations, health status, and personal characteristics, as well as health system characteristics. This article presents a cross-sectional study of the relationship among these factors using data collected from a large sample of university employees. The primary hypothesis, that patients' expectations would be the best predictor of satisfaction, was supported by the data. Health status, personal characteristics, and health system characteristics were not strong predictors. The findings suggest that patients may base their evaluations on sophisticated expectations and that those expectations vary from one sociodemographic group to another. Implications for social work practice in health care are highlighted.
Parent visitation, the scheduled, face-to-face contacts between parents and their children in foster care, is the primary intervention for maintaining and supporting the development of parent-child relationships necessary for reunification. A review of the child welfare literature, however, reveals that for some parents and children, visits are problematic. Indeed, parents and children's experiences of visits, the quality of interaction observed during visits, and outcomes for children vary widely. The parent-child attachment relationship is one important factor influencing the quality of visits. Attachment theory and research indicate that there are universal, developmental, variable, and problematic aspects of attachment relationships. These aspects of attachment relationships provide a heuristic approach for understanding, assessing, and intervening in parent-child relationships during foster care visits.
Following the Tarasoff decision, many social workers believe that they have a duty to warn third parties of the danger posed to them by clients. However, a careful analysis of this decision and the cases and statutes that have followed indicates that social workers' duty under the law is circumscribed. This article describes social workers' duty under the law and outlines standards of care for assessing and responding to threats of harm. It places the duty to protect third parties into the larger context of social workers' ethical and legal obligation to protect confidentiality.
One way to gain a better understanding of cancer patients' experiences in the workplace is to study their relationships with their co-workers. A study of 61 cancer patients who continued to work during treatment or who returned to work following treatment found that, in general, these cancer patients believed that their co-workers had positive attitudes toward them. Nevertheless, some reported that they encountered changed and sometimes difficult interactions with their co-workers. Their experiences suggest ways in which social workers can help cancer patients prepare for their encounters with co-workers.
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