Health & Social Work最新文献

Patient-centered healthcare is a goal for all health systems. However, given the inherent complexities of the health system as one with many nonlinear and dynamic components, the safety of patients could be affected. Therefore, there is the need to study these complexities to manage them toward optimal service delivery. The present study is a qualitative inquiry into the complexities of primary healthcare (PHC) in Nigeria and effects on patients' safety across four PHC facilities in Enugu state in southeast Nigeria. It utilizes a framework that draws on the components of interprofessional collaboration, inclusive of health financing and health workforce satisfaction, to understand the complex PHC system and patient safety. The study findings show that the PHC system in the study area performs suboptimally on the three counts, which implies poor management of the complexities of the system such that patients are highly susceptible to harm. Making a commitment to addressing the shortcomings present in each of the three components will help to decomplexify PHC in line with the World Health Organization agenda of achieving resilient and strong health systems. Importantly, optimizing the psychosocial space in Nigeria's PHC by employing qualified social workers and other psychosocial professionals is crucial for patient safety and a range of psychosocial activities that can enhance job satisfaction of health workers.

This article discusses the use of codesign, design thinking (DT), and design jams in collaboration with interdisciplinary scholars, service providers, and community-based stakeholders as an approach to social work intervention development-specifically, to tackle health inequities and timely knowledge translation (KT). An application of these methods to the problem of sexual health disparities and lack of access to inclusive sexual health education in school-based settings for LGBTQ+ youth is discussed. LGBTQ+ Youth HeLP (Health Literacy Project) is a holistic online sexual health resource providing evidence-based information to LGBTQ+ youth in an accessible and age-appropriate format. This article considers potential opportunities and obstacles for utilizing DT to develop responsive solutions to health inequities and health-related KT learned from the project. Codesign offers effective options for generating collaborations that may increase cross-stakeholder perspective taking in group settings and produce high-quality outputs with increased likelihood of uptake.

Although social workers have an elevated risk of infection with COVID-19, no previous studies have investigated the virus's impact on practitioners. Using survey data (N = 441), this study identified associations between stress, depression, and COVID-related factors and explored the role of social connectedness as a moderator for mental health among Ohio social workers. The results of the study showed that among social workers with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, 70 percent experienced moderate/high levels of stress, and 37 percent met the criteria for clinical depressive symptoms. Results from the multiple regression analyses showed that perceived stress was positively associated with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis for social workers, and depression was positively associated with working with a client with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. An interaction effect was also identified between social connectedness and social workers' mental health. These findings suggest that the provision of individual or organizational interventions that emphasize social connectedness can help to protect social workers' mental health.

This study examined the association between depressive symptoms and self-rated health (SRH) and whether and how such association varies by education among older adults with cancer. Data came from the 2019 National Health Interview Survey. A total of 2,470 participants aged 65 or older who had been diagnosed with cancer by a doctor or other health professional were included in this study. Ordinal logistic regression was used to examine the association between depressive symptoms and SRH and whether and how such association varies by education among older adults with cancer. More depressive symptoms were associated with worse SRH. Such association became stronger with higher education among older adults with cancer. Findings confirm the associations between depressive symptoms and SRH among older adults with cancer. The differential impact of education on SRH and on the association between depressive symptoms and SRH highlights the importance of considering patients' educational attainment in a more comprehensive way when working with older adults with cancer. When conducting distress screening among cancer survivors, oncology social workers should be aware of the complex relationship between education and depression in relation to cancer survivors' SRH.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought widespread devastation across the United States, exacerbating existing health inequities rooted in the social determinants of health. Social work is the key workforce tasked with providing social care in healthcare settings. In September 2019, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released a landmark Consensus Study Report, Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care: Moving Upstream to Improve the Nation's Health. The report describes a framework for addressing key care needs that articulates five "As for action" (5As)-awareness, alignment, assistance, adjustment, and advocacy-that are critical to social care. Drawing from a series of focus groups conducted with 55 social workers employed in a large urban pediatric quaternary hospital, this study qualitatively examines the utility of this framework in characterizing social care activities during the pandemic response and recovery efforts. Findings suggest that the 5As framework is both applicable to pandemic social work practice and an accurate encapsulation of the core elements of hospital social work practice, even if social workers themselves may not necessarily be aware of that conceptualization. Future implications for social work practice in arenas of awareness, adjustment, assistance, alignment, and advocacy are also discussed.

Thousands of people living with HIV are incarcerated in the United States. Research about this vulnerable community has focused on access and adherence to medical care, including the impact of stigma on these treatment outcomes. This study presents qualitative data collected from 18 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women living with HIV to expand knowledge about how HIV stigma shapes the lived experience of incarceration. The HIV Stigma Framework, including theory about enacted, anticipated, and internalized stigma, was used to analyze participants' narratives. Findings demonstrate an ongoing struggle with all three of these stigma mechanisms. Most participants deliberately concealed their HIV status and, therefore, experienced little enacted stigma. However, their narratives do describe anticipated stigma and, to a lesser extent, internalized stigma. There were gender differences in HIV disclosure and symbolic stigma and intersectionality are used to understand this variation. These findings illustrate the persistence of HIV stigma in correctional institutions and underscore the importance of fighting HIV stigma and homophobia within social work practice.