The Cost of Caring for Patients with an Illness

Abstract

This article will examine the effects of hospital work on social workers. It will highlight the events of a focus group that was used to gather data in an attempt to begin to understand the stressors faced by the worker. The Self-Constructivist Model (McCann & Pearlman, 1990b) is utilized in relation to trauma experienced by the social worker, while working with patients diagnosed with an acute, chronic or life-threatening illness. Findings are summarized and recommendations are made to assist hospital social workers in coping with the aftermath of secondary trauma.

Social Workers’ Experiences of the World Trade Center Disaster: Stressors and their Relationship to Symptom Types

“…This may partly account for the low magnitude of correlations (the small variance in participant symptom levels overall also affects small relationship sizes). However, while social workers, disaster workers, and other professionals are trained to handle intervention-related stress, they still experience psychological effects, especially after a shared traumatic event (Dane & Chachkes, 2001;Holaday & Warren-Miller, 1995;Newhill & Sites, 2000). The need for extra support, debriefing, and training for social workers may continue long after the immediate event and increase with the amount of services provided to clients with trauma-related problems.…”

The Relationship Between Clinician Sex, Ethnicity, Sexual Identity and Secondary Traumatic Stress

“…More recently, work has been focused on mental health personnel. Most studies have focused on those counseling immediate trauma victims, including sexual assault care workers (Ghahramanlou & Brodbeck, 2000;Jenkins, Mitchell, Baird, Whitfield, & Meyer, 2011;Regehr & Cadell, 1999), child protection workers (Nelson-Gardell & Harris, 2003), and hospital social workers (Dane & Chachkes, 2001). Still others are now focusing on mental health clinicians in longer-term roles, such as family therapists (Negash & Sahin, 2011) and therapists in other clinic settings.…”

Examining Self-Protection Measures Guarding Adult Protective Services Social Workers Against Compassion Fatigue

“…It is interesting to note that prior literature has found that helping professionals who are experiencing compassion fatigue have had difficulty with their spirituality; however, in this sample, no participants indicated any issues with a decrease in their spirituality or that they relied on their spirituality as a protective measure to guard against compassion fatigue (Dane & Chachkes, 2001).…”