Transforming Racial and Cultural Lines in Health and Social Care

Listening, Loving, and Lifting Spirits When You Can

Jan Froehlich, June Thornton-Marsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000326215
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This book proposes an innovative new model for transforming racial and cultural lines in health and social care through communication processes, and introduces listening partnerships as a cost-effective, sustainable intervention to improve communication skills.

Transforming Racial and Cultural Lines in Health and Social Care walks the reader through the process of developing the essential skills for racially and culturally effective and compassionate communication. Divided into four parts, the book includes examples that highlight the significance of each skill and provides listening partnerships on each topic. In the final part of the book, Froehlich and Thornton-Marsh interview medical, health, and social care practitioners regarding their experiences in using racially and culturally effective communication to transform health and social care. Improved communication enhances the experience of health and social care for both patients and practitioners and ultimately supports better health outcomes.

Transforming Racial and Cultural Lines in Health and Social Care is essential reading for health and social care students looking to improve their communication skills and provide better care.

PART IV

Garnering love, hope, and leadership for human and planetary health

FIGURE 11.1A model for transforming racial and cultural lines in health and social care

Part IV model components Leadership: Facilitation actions to transform health for all humans and the planet

•modelling integrity, courage, caring, and decisive action

•inspiring hope, furnishing confidence, and communicating a shared vision for better health and wellbeing for all

•eliciting the thinking of groups to liberate creative ideas and develop best policies and practices

•committing to group goals, policies, and practices

•promoting listening exchanges to facilitate healing and unity within and across all racial and cultural lines

•supporting appreciations of all health team members, including oneself, and the planet

•collaborating to develop and implement action steps that lift spirits

•inviting constructive feedback to optimize collaborative efforts

•infusing enjoyment and playfulness in collaborative endeavours

11

HOPES AND VISIONS FOR HUMAN AND PLANETARY HEALTH

Voices of frontline workers as leaders

Voices of health and social care practitioners

Health and social care practitioners and all members of health teams are frontline workers in the struggle to promote health and wellbeing. Their voices are crucial to the process of transforming health and social care systems so that more and more lives can be saved and the health and wellbeing of all can be achieved. In this chapter, practitioners from diverse backgrounds share stories of pride in their work and challenges that interfere with optimal health and social care. Perspectives on the importance of the healing generated through engaged listening, a loving presence, and the artful lifting of spirits are shared. Stories of the transformative power of effective communication within and across racial and cultural lines, interprofessional collaboration, and leadership are highlighted. Hopes, wishes, and visions for health and social care systems that support the health and wellbeing of individuals, populations, communities, and the planet are presented.

The following excerpts from interviews with a variety of practitioners honour their experiences and perspectives. Their full credentials and place of employment can be found in the Acknowledgements section. While we are delighted to elevate the voices of a variety of health and social care practitioners, we acknowledge and honour the work of all members of health and social care teams, many of whom are not represented in the excerpts below. The reader is invited to enjoy learning from the practitioners who are represented in our interviews, and to engage in ongoing listening, loving, and lifting spirits with diverse members of the health and social care teams and to share the gifts of who they are with each other. Listening partnership questions and journal/discussion prompts in Table 11.1 can be used not only with listening partners, but with all health and social care practitioners encountered in one’s daily life. As we deepen connections, learn from each other, and heal together from the hardships of our work and our daily lives, we clarify our vision and path towards human and planetary health and wellbeing. The voices of practitioners are also integrated into Chapter 12 as we explore inherent and designated leadership – leadership that transforms experiences in health and social care to save lives and improve health and wellbeing for all cultural and racial groups and the planet.

What are you proud of and appreciate about being a __________ and about your profession as a whole?

Carl, PA – The opportunity and the ability to provide care and the commitment to service.

Islane, RN, MSN – To me, it is a privilege to be a nurse, and especially a mental health nurse. I meet people where they are and most of the time, in their worst times. I can be with them on their journey and use my nursing skills to give them hope to fight back.

Joshua, MS, OT – You share a particular bond with clients because you work on such meaningful things in a creative way that resonates with just them.

Kelli, MSW – We have a wide view of the world. I love being with kindred spirits who are also social workers who see the world the way I do. It’s a calling for me. I appreciate I found where I belong.

Marie, MSW – When facilitating life stories, we bring pertinent information to the team so they see the clients in the context of their environment and their lived experiences and history. I think this brings a lot of empathy and contributes to better care. As social workers, we get paid for being really caring – and that’s great.

Patricia, BS, OT – I am proud of being able to come up with creative ways to motivate patients and to connect with them – especially those patients who are having a difficult time adjusting to their conditions or situations. I have to get very creative.

Regina, MSW – I love helping individuals become more confident and independent, and advocating on the individual, community, and societal level.

Sabine, Cultural Broker – I love helping people, seeing the joy in clients’ faces, and solving problems.

Said, OTD – I am proud of occupational therapy’s holistic approach to improving people’s mental and physical conditions in order to improve their lives. It is an honor to be a professor teaching new practitioners who are helping people, throughout the age span, live their lives fully. I am also very proud and honoured that I am helping to bring occupational therapy to Morocco, the country I am originally from. I can be called the “Father of OT in Morocco”.

Saige, Tribal Youth Engagement Manager – I am really honoured to be able to work with the youth – being able to help, to support them in leadership roles, and to uplift their voices.

Steve, DPT – When you’re seeing clients, they are debilitated and weak and are often functioning well below their baseline, and at times feel hopeless. Being a PT affords me an opportunity to not only play the role of a therapist, a teacher, and a counsellor to patients, family members, and caregivers. I come away each day knowing I made a small difference in people’s lives.

Usha, MD – I enjoy getting to know about the lives of patients and piecing together their stories into a cohesive history. I love addressing the root cause of their disease and helping them live healthier and have a better quality of life.

What is hard, difficult, or challenging about being a ______________?

Carl, PA – I went from clinical practice to public health, to academia, and now do consult work. As a PA, you are trained and educated in the medical model. PA education is a modified form of medical school. They literally took four years of medical school and squeezed it down to two and a half years. You are held to a single standard of excellence relative to clinical knowledge and clinical skills. At the same time, you must come to grips with the fact [that] no matter how good you are and how good you get, you will never be captain of the team. You find yourself having to constantly temper your own ego and your own assertiveness and to subsume it for the benefit of the team. Also, people are still asking what a PA is. We have done a really poor job of answering that question.

Islane, RN, MSN – I want to make everybody happy, give health back, but I am not always able to. Sometimes just being there is all I can do.

Joshua, MS, OT – As culturally fluid and as culturally sensitive as I thought I was, I still was never as informed as I wanted to be – I have to learn from my mistakes.

Kelli, MSW – It’s easy for other people to dismiss the experience of other human beings in a way we can’t. It feels never-ending and often feels like the problems are so systemically focused. Lots of things break my heart because of all the tragedy we see, and all the injustice and unfairness in the world I can’t look away from.

Marie, MSW – There are more complicated situations and multiple co-occurring stressors that people are facing. There are waning resources or no resources at all with the expectation that we’re supposed to bring some resources when all we can bring is listening, validation, and witnessing the struggles. We shed light on people’s resilience. There is also a conflict from wanting to create social change within a broken system that is designed to keep things status quo. Social work is primarily a female-dominated profession and we are undervalued and often expected to be self-sacrificing.

Patricia, BS, OT – Waking up in the morning and gearing up for whatever racial or other discriminatory incidents might come at others or myself, and knowing I am on my own and don’t have any support is challen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of vignettes
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PART IOne human race with a tapestry of cultures: A communication process for transforming racial and cultural lines in health and social care
• PART II Refinement of racially and culturally effective communication in health and social care
• PART III Deepening and restoring connections within and across racial and cultural lines
• PART IV Garnering love, hope, and leadership for human and planetary health
• References
• Index