Health Medical Homework Help

Respond to the blog posts of three colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

• Validate an idea in your colleague’s post with your own experience.
• Make a suggestion to your colleague’s posting.

Lachandra—

A potential challenge for engagement in my field education experience is sometimes the children/adolescents that attend the APEX program are not willing to talk with their therapist/intern. It can be difficult to grasp their attention and stay focus. At my agency, we work with children/adolescents who have been diagnosed with developmental disabilities such as ADHD/depression. When a child/adolescent is on their medication and depending on what type of medicine they are taking can affect how they interact during their therapy sessions. Let’s take today for example, during a counseling session I noticed that the young boy would stare at me as if he was daydreaming. I asked him if he was okay, he stated that he was fine, I then went to ask him if he was sleepy he said no he was not. Come to find out it was his medicine that he takes every morning that has him in a coma-like behavior. When a child/adolescent is on certain medicines it can have a huge effect on how the counseling session can go. I am becoming more and more familiar with the children/adolescents and their families along with some of the issues and challenges that their children are facing. . According to Birkenmaier & Berg-Weger (2018), as an intern one needs to have the ability to work with individuals and families to effectively focus on communicating with the clients (pg. 118).

A personal action plan in cases like the one I mentioned is to consult with my field supervisor on how to interact when a child is not willing to talk during their counseling sessions. I would also consult and ask when a child’s medicine affects how they go about their school day and counseling session what is the appropriate and effective way to continue with the counseling sessions when they are on their medicine. I will show clients empathy by letting them know that I understand that the medicine that they are taking may have an effect on how he/she interacts in therapy. Identifying with another person’s emotions, the phenomenon we call empathy is the foundation on which all useful public service and, indeed, the social contract itself is predicated (Gerdes & Segal, 2011).

References:

Birkenmaier, J., & Berg-Weger, M. (2018). The practicum companion for social work: Integrating class and fieldwork (4th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.

Gerdes, K. E., & Segal, E. (2011). Importance of empathy for social work practice: Integrating new science. Social Work, 56(2), 141-148.

Jehan—

• An explanation of potential challenges for engagement in field education experience

The engagement process involves developing an agreement on the goals and tasks of treatment through the collaboration of the worker and client (Birkenmaier & Berg-Weger, 2018). As a recruitment caseworker, part of my tasks is to conduct a phone interview with the potential foster caregivers, guide them throughout the process, ensure they submit all the needed clearances, motivate them to attend the pieces of training required from the agency, and cooperative with the DPW home inspection. The challenges are whether they are fully and openly discloses their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. If the potential foster caregivers demonstrate the concept of investment to take responsibility for their goals. Also, if they prefer to not be around with an intern or talk about their lives with an intern.

• An explanation of personal action plans you might take to address engagement in your field education experience

My plan to address the challenges during the engagement process is to have a fair exchange and open communication with the prospective foster caregivers. I believe that clients should like their case-worker and respect the work that the worker is helping them to accomplish. The use of motivational interviewing, include clients’ support networks, commonly significant others, families, and friends, increase their motivation, and aid in their continued engagement. Other strategies for assisting include a “client-centered” approach. Through this approach, clients identify their own areas that need improvement and assume control over the direction of their treatment. Engagement through establishing mutual empathy between the worker or intern involves developing empathy for where clients are in their lives and for the whole person including clients’ social and emotional world (Gerdes & Segal,2011). Through mutual empathy and the development of the therapeutic relationship, a client can become engaged in his or her treatment. Lastly, the agency and my supervisors created a safe space in which interns can ask questions, make mistakes, and hear from supervisors about the challenges they have encountered throughout my field experience can help to encourage an open dialogue about complex issues.

Birkenmaier, J., & Berg-Weger, M. (2018). The practicum companion for social work: Integrating class and fieldwork (4th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.

Gerdes, K. E., & Segal, E. (2011). Importance of empathy for social work practice: Integrating new science. Social Work, 56(2), 141–148

Megan—

An explanation of potential challenges for engagement in field education experience

Potential challenges for engagement for me in my field experience will be the lack of clients I will be with throughout my field experience. As an intern, there is a higher chance of individuals canceling or no-showing for their appointments with me. This would limit my experience and ability to engage with clients. Another challenge for engagement with clients would be not knowing what to say or not wanting to see an intern in the first place, this would be a challenge that I would have to overcome when working with clients individually.

An explanation of personal action plans you might take to address engagement in your field education experience

A personal action plan that I will put in place to overcome these challenges will be to continue to educate myself on working with individuals. Take continuing education courses, webinars, and seminars on motivational imaging and how to engage and build rapport with clients. I will also continue to learn to be comfortable with silence, which is something I am working on at this point – I have found that I am always looking to fill that void in the conversation but have been told that there is power in silence and this can elicit more information than questions sometimes.

Silence can allow the client to begin to process their thoughts and feelings without distraction (Macaulay & Buchanan, 2021).

Reference

Macaulay, S., & Buchanan, D. (2021, February 19). How to make the most of the power of silence. Training Journal. https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/features/…