Case study (Social work) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Case study (Social work) - Essay Example Although social workers are activists for groups that are oppressed within society, they may not recognize their own privilege as educated people. Badwall, O’Connor and Rossiter, (2004) in exploration of organizational change as a reflective process present a case study that examines how privilege and oppression impact on change induced conflict within a social agency. The conflict is considered and discussed by three personnel working within the agency. This paper will examine this case study from each of four perspectives: individual, systems, structural and community; the individual perspective will identify the strengths of each of the main characters and the central conflicts created within the agency; the systems perspective will discuss how change impacts on the interrelations between the organization and its personnel; the structural perspective will focus on how institutionally embedded injustices, such as race, class and gender influence specific individuals and the organization as a whole; the community perspective will identify and explain one specific social problem that exists within the case study community. I. Individual Perspective There are number of organizational changes such as anticipatory, reactive, incremental, strategic, as well as changes through tuning, adaptation, reorientation and recreation. These changes are unavoidable in human organizations and have consequences for the way that individuals respond. Human responses in this changing environment are diverse. In this regard, anticipatory changes are characterized by the changes in an organization that can be anticipated and can be prepared for by virtue of planning and proactive strategies. Reactive changes refer to changes made in response to an unanticipated situation within the organization. Incremental changes occur by virtue of the introduction of new subsystems to the organization’s constructs; while strategic changes take place when an alteration in the organiz ation results in the application of a new strategy as a means of taking the organization in a more appropriate direction. Individuals respond to these changes in diverse ways; some may respond with unrealistic optimism or feelings of shock on acceptance of the reality of the situation or they can view those changes as constructive institutional direction. These responses manifest in different ways, such as laughing off the changes or regarding them with suspicion or by simply accepting those changes without question. Essentially organizational change or any alteration to normative structures can be perceived differently by individuals. II. Strength of main characters Amy’s strength is her academic background and knowledge of social issues; as a white female academic, she took a year-long sabbatical in order to connect her academic experience with the practical reality of working in the field. She was determined to expose the link between the university’s social work pr ogram and the community’s social work. With this motivation, Amy joined the health agency and began work as an assistant to the receptionist, a post she felt provided an effective opportunity for her to become more acquainted with the staff members and clientele. She also thought it could help her learn about the structural premise of the organization such as its objectives, health programs and other projects and services. During her post Amy became familiar with a project designed

Nursing Burnout Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Nursing Burnout - Essay Example Professionals providing healthcare services with particular emphasis on the nursing profession are known to be a group of professionals with a high potential for developing burnout (Garrosa et al, 2008). The health care services environment that the occupation of nursing functions in, is an environment that makes high demands on energy levels and different levels of competencies, poses challenges to the personal values and faith, and despite best efforts frequent loss of life of the patients. All these experiences of can contribute to burnout in a nursing professional (Ewing & Carter, 2004). Burnout among nursing professionals can severely compromise the quality of health care that health care seekers receive leading to poor outcomes, making burnout among nursing professionals an issue of serious concern to the health care service sector and society (Sahraian et al, 2008). From Ilhan et al, 2008 come the figures that it is estimated that nearly forty percent of the nursing professionals suffer from burnout, with about twenty percent of hospital nursing staff planning to give up work within a span of one year. Garrosa et al, 2008, however, provide a lower estimate of the extent of burnout among nursing professionals at twenty-five percent. Irrespective of the variance on these figures, the significant feature that stands out is the high prevalence of nursing providing support to the general belief that the nursing profession is highly susceptible to burn out. Nursing professionals function in different areas of medicine and there has been evidence to suggest that there is a variance in the prevalence of burnout among the different areas of medicine that the nursing professionals function in. Sahraian et al, 2008, in their examination of the levels of burnout in the areas of internal medicine, surgery, psychiatry and burn wards and the factors that contribute to it, show that