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.
• Share an insight from having read your colleague’s posting.
• Expand on your colleague’s post.

LaTonja—

I have learned so much during my field experience. Many of the skills that I acquired were anticipated, and others were not. I anticipated exercising empathy, active listening, communication, and organizational skills. I have discovered that empathy is the foundation for building trust. When clients know and feel that you genuinely care about them, they trust you with their vulnerability. I count it an honor to have built trusting relationships with my clients in which they feel safe to disclose sensitive information. Active listening is another skill that I utilized. My field experience has taught me that active listening requires more than textbook knowledge to implement it effectively. During client interactions, it is easy for our minds to wander and disconnect from the present. Our wandering thoughts can distract us from the information our clients provide, thus, decreasing our ability to attend to our client’s needs. Active listening is a skill that requires a social worker’s physical, mental, and emotional attention.

In addition, I have gained more knowledge on how to probe during my field experience. Probing is a skill for information gathering; a social worker must be strategic in what they ask and how it is asked. Before my field experience, I was familiar with asking my clients questions that required short answers. For instance, demographic-related questions or basic information. When providing therapy, probing skills helped me assess my clients emotional state, underlying issues, and additional in-depth information. Probing also helped my clients explore their emotions; it helped them look below the surface to the source of their emotional distress.

Jannie—

During my field education experience, I have utilize social work practice skills that are traditionally used. I have also used my sense of humor as well. Knowing how to be tactful when using humor is always key as you do not want to be perceived as being insensitive to the client’s experiences. Reupert, A. (2007) speaks of the use of self-enactments in both therapeutic and non-therapeutic settings such as the use of humor. I had a client who had just shared her traumatic experience with a forensic interviewer and my role was to assess for trauma symptoms after the interviewing experience. This client was emotionally shattered right in front of me. There were very few words to be said at the time. She asked for her sister to come in the interview room and I obliged. When I saw the connection that they had and how the client (17 yr female) was emotionally dependent on the sister (20’s), I interjected that they appear to be very close and that it appears that the relationship with her sister appears to be very important and strong. She responded in the positive by agreeing. I then asked if her sister was her “She-ro”. This brought a smile to the client as well as the sister. The client paused and looked up at the sister and said, “I guess you are my She-ro”! They both laughed and the room became lighter as the client stopped crying and was began to utilize deep cleansing breaths to self-regulate her mood.

Other practice skills gained while at my field location is being in tune with boundary setting, and social perceptiveness. A lot of the clients who come into the Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center often use a lot of non-verbal cues. When first encountering the client mentioned above, my natural instinct was to grab her and just hold her through the process of her breaking down and crying uncontrollably. However, I understood that this reaction is not good practice. I have in the past asked permission when in Field I & II, however, quickly was told and learned that it is not good practice.

Reupert, A. (2007). Social worker’s use of self. Clinical Social Work Journal, 35(2), 107–116.

Kiarra—

An explanation of the social work practice skills you have gained by participating in your field education experience

The social work practice skills I gained by participating in my field education experience are having more confidence, advocacy, effectively empathizing, and self-awareness. I also increased my knowledge on how to conduct thorough research to genuinely understand my client’s diagnosis, symptoms, and triggers. Advocating for clients meant supporting them by providing additional resources, when they felt that they did not have the capacity to do so, due to their lack of knowledge, confidence, or having feelings of feeling “burned out.” Understanding and knowing how to navigate empirical research is a skill that I believe that I have somewhat mastered. My undergraduate years involved intense research at the University of Maryland of College Park. My experience in undergrade provided me with the skillset to thoroughly know how to research ways in which I could support my clients using Evidence-Based Practices.

Most importantly building on my ability to ask permission, empathize, and self-disclose improved tremendously during my field experience. I have learned through my own experience that meeting people where they are involves asking permission. One cannot assume that because a client is in therapy that they a ready to discuss those deep dark secrets that have laid dormant for years. Asking permission allows the clients to emotionally and mentally prepare for the onset of emotions that were once suppressed that may come flooding in at once. Maximizing on using empathy effectively also helped me to control my emotional involvement but lead us to the path of building a trusting rapport, my clients knew that I genuinely cared and was interested in helping them to heal. Lastly, supervision helped me to become more conscious, confident, and self-aware of my biases, traumas, and what I was also facing. I learned how to self-disclose without giving too much information but just enough information so that my clients knew that, yes I am the clinician but I am human and we hurt the same. Thanks to this field experience I built up the courage to seek therapy myself and I am finally ready to let go of the contentment that I held onto for years.