Welcome to Issue #199 of the Social Work E-News! Thank you for subscribing to receive this email newsletter, which is brought to you by the publisher of The New Social Worker magazine, SocialWorker.com, SocialWorkJobBank.com, and other social work publications.

 

It is summertime here in the U.S.! I hope you are enjoying the change of season.

 

I am so excited! I have a secret and I'm telling you first! As you know, Dr. Danna Bodenheimer, LCSW, wrote the hugely popular Real World Clinical Social Work: Find Your Voice and Find Your Way, which The New Social Worker Press published last year. The exciting news is that Dr. Bodenheimer has a NEW book coming out next month. The book is On Clinical Social Work: Meditations and Truths From the Field. I absolutely love this collection of writings and photographs, and I think you will, too, if you are interested in the clinical aspects of social work. (P.S. Danna's blog is returning, too.)

 

The beautiful, full-color, hardcover edition of this book makes a beautiful gift for you, a student, or a colleague. It is available for PRE-ORDER now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble (maybe at your local bookstore, too), and they will ship it to you on or around July 17. 

 

Jonathan Singer of the Social Work Podcast wrote the foreword to this book, and he said, "Danna pays attention to life’s details with a psychotherapist’s insight and writes about them with the passion of a slam poet. She speaks to the soul of social work and inspires us to think about more than just social work."

 

 

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     In January 2015, at the age of 24, I began practicing palliative home care social work. In my work, I have experienced the most intense emotions in my life, both moments of deep sadness and intense joy. I have come face-to-face with secondary trauma and at times felt that I had reached my breaking point. Throughout this overwhelming journey, however, I have grown dramatically and have never been more satisfied both in my professional and personal life.

 

 

     My journey with palliative social work began as a secondary role to my position as a hospice social worker. I graduated in 2012 with a BSW and shortly thereafter had the good luck to secure a position at a nonprofit hospice agency in California. After working in hospice for a year, our sister home care agency developed a palliative program, and I jumped at the opportunity to be part of this promising new experience. It was the perfect opportunity for me, because I was beginning an MSW program, and becoming a palliative social worker would act as both my employment-based internship and an extension of my passion for hospice and working with end-of-life issues.

 

     Hospice care is end-of-life care for individuals who are no longer seeking curative or life-prolonging treatment such as chemotherapy, radiation, and experimental treatments. Palliative care, while similar to hospice, allows individuals to receive treatments that will prolong their lives, but these patients are often living with terminal illness.

 

     My primary motivation for seeking the position, and what continues to motivate me to this day, is the reality that death and dying are extremely taboo topics. Therefore, many individuals do not receive adequate information regarding their end-of-life options. Current research indicates that a major barrier for a patient’s preference to die at home is poor communication between patients and their doctors (Reese, 2013).

 

     Additionally, many individuals in our society do not receive adequate education on the risks and benefits of CPR and Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders for someone with a terminal illness, nor do enough individuals receive sufficient education on their rights to elect against pursuing treatment that may only be prolonging a painful dying process. As a palliative social worker, I have the opportunity to address this gap in care and provide the education so many people need when they are living with a terminal disease. Little did I know, however, the enormity of the challenge I was undertaking until I was in the thick of a near-emotional breakdown of my own.

 

 

     There is undoubtedly great reward in being a palliative social worker. It is a position that holds a great deal of responsibility, stress, and demand. Reflecting back on when I first began the MSW program and my new position, I realize now that I set enormously high expectations for myself. I saw a problem that I had every intention of fixing—I would close the gap in the end-of-life education that was not happening adequately between terminally ill patients and their physicians. I took the task upon myself to help patients process the information that they were terminal. What an enormous job I had undertaken!

 

     Grief is something I have had to look squarely in the face in this position, and this was not initially a conscious decision. The stress of my placement and the emotional difficulty with palliative care has brought up a tremendous sense of empathy that has also brought a strong sense of grief. Although I had worked in hospice for the previous two years, there is a different sense of connection and purpose with palliative care. Being a hospice social worker means I take a journey with patients to their final days. I entered into it with a sense of optimism that may sound strange to many. It is a beautiful concept that individuals have the ability to remain at home with their friends and family and get the symptom management they need.

• Direct from the publisher
• Amazon.com

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