Social work ‘voice’ and interprofessional education: factors beyond professional culture

ABSTRACT

Interprofessional education (IPE) ideally trains students from various disciplines together. Social work historically has lower status and power in the healthcare hierarchy, and little is known about how status differentials affect ‘social work voice’ during IPE. We explored ‘social work voice’ during an IPE event through social work students’, other disciplines’ students’, and social work faculty perspectives. We share the lessons learned from reflecting on events that occurred during the IPE event and during students’ and facilitators’ debriefing. Surveys were sent to all social work attendees and a random selection of students from other disciplines, with lower response rates than desired. A focus group was conducted with the social work facilitators. IPE attendees valued learning with varied disciplines. The social work contribution was acknowledged as unique and valued by other disciplines, even when social work students did not expect to be valued. Serendipitously, an interaction between social work students illustrated the obvious yet seldom recognized importance of students’ cultural influences. IPE organizers and faculty must attend to cultural and gender inputs when assisting social work (and other) students to find their ‘voice.’

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional education (IPE)
• social work
• cultural influences
• gender influences
• professional culture

Acknowledgments

We thank two assessors who engaged with our analysis, provided useful feedback, and improved this manuscript. We also thank the students from social work, nursing, law, and medicine who participated in this IPE event, the faculty facilitators from each discipline, and the faculty that participated in the focus group. We would also like to thank Jessica French for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We use the language of patient, recognizing that it is problematic. Care recipient or service user might be better, although unwieldy. We elected to use the language of the typical health setting to indicate a person presenting to a health setting due to a physical health problem deemed a medical problem.

2. Percentages will be reported occasionally within the Social Work Student survey despite the fact that the small sample makes percentages less meaningful.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorraine Y. Howard

Lorraine Y. Howard, LCSW, LCADC is the Director of Addiction Education at Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies. Additionally, she is a PhD candidate at Rutger’s School of Social Work. Her clinical practice spans over 20 years in the field of social work and substance use working with individuals from various socio-economic, cultural, ethnic, educational, and other diverse backgrounds in various settings, including oncology. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7351-792X

Judith L. M. McCoyd

Judith L. M. McCoyd, PhD, LCSWJ is an associate professor at Rutgers University School of Social Work, having served as a health social worker in perinatal, oncology, and emergency room settings in the 1980s through the early 2000s. Her research and practice lie at the intersection of physical and mental health, loss and grief, and interprofessional collaboration. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8105-8690