Supporting social work field instructors: Empowerment as a strategy for preventing burnout

Summary: Social work field instructors are integral to social work education and must balance professional responsibilities with supervising students. Empowerment and burnout are concepts that may impact the well-being of social work field instructors. However, few studies have explored empowerment and burnout among this population. This study aimed to a) explore the association between overall empowerment and burnout and b) explore how different elements of empowerment are associated with burnout when controlling for interprofessional work, demographic characteristics, and workplace characteristics. This nonexperimental cross-sectional study utilized primary survey data to examine the association between the Social Worker Empowerment Scale and ProQOL Burnout scores among a sample of social work field instructors (N = 189) of a Mid-Atlantic university. Findings: Preliminary bivariate analysis found a significant negative association between overall empowerment and burnout. Hierarchical linear regression results displayed a significant negative association between burnout and two elements of empowerment: Collective identity and knowledge. One element of empowerment, propensity to act, was found to have a significant positive association with burnout. Years of social work experience and coping on an interprofessional team were found to have significant negative associations with burnout. Applications: Agencies and educational institutions can reduce burnout among field instructors by fostering their sense of connection to the social work profession and ensuring they feel knowledgeable and competent in their role. This can be accomplished through fostering strong relationships and providing ongoing, accessible training to field instructors. More detailed recommendations for reducing burnout by increasing empowerment are provided in the manuscript.

Interrupting White Supremacy in Field Education

As social work’s signature pedagogy, field education socializes students into their professional roles as practitioners. However, for students and field instructors of color, racial microaggressions add another dimension to the practice experience. Utilizing findings from a qualitative study exploring the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) social work students and agency-based field instructors, this paper highlights experiences of microaggressions in field placement settings. Specifically, BIPOC students and field instructors described being tokenized in agencies, feeling invisible in placement settings, experiencing microaggressions from service users or students, and witnessing microaggressions. Experiences of microaggressions had emotional impacts, and affected participants’ sense of professional identity and confidence. Based on findings, we share recommendations for addressing racial microaggressions within social work field education in order to promote racial equity, including: grounding microaggressions in an ecological approach, unpacking the concept of professionalism, and building capacity of field instructors and agencies to respond to racism and microaggressions. Addressing microaggressions in field education is necessary to support BIPOC students in field placements, honor the work and well-being of racialized social workers who serve as field instructors, disrupt white supremacy, and move the social work field forward in regard to anti-racist practice.

Process-Oriented Instrument and Taxonomy for Teaching Surgical Procedures in Medical Training: The Ultrasound-Guided Insertion of Central Venous Catheter

Procedural training is relevant for physicians who perform surgical procedures. In the medical education field, instructors who teach surgical procedures need to understand how their students are learning to give them feedback and assess them objectively. The sequence of steps of surgical procedures is an aspect rarely considered in medical education, and state-of-the-art tools for giving feedback and assessing students do not focus on this perspective. Process Mining can help to include this perspective in this field since it has recently been used successfully in some applications. However, these previous developments are more centred on students than on instructors. This paper presents the use of Process Mining to fill this gap, generating a taxonomy of activities and a process-oriented instrument. We evaluated both tools with instructors who teach central venous catheter insertion. The results show that the instructors found both tools useful to provide objective feedback and objective assessment. We concluded that the instructors understood the information provided by the instrument since it provides helpful information to understand students’ performance regarding the sequence of steps followed.

Knowledge That Changes Social Work Practice

There is continuing interest in the relationship between knowledge and practice in social work. Overly narrow conceptualizations of the EBP model deepened the gap between practice knowledge and formal research evidence in the profession. While much has been written about the dissemination and adaptation of research findings to practice, much less is known about the actual sources of knowledge social workers draw on in their practice. This paper reports findings from an exploratory survey about the sources and content of knowledge that changed professional practice among social work field instructors (n=250) in St. Louis. An analysis of open-ended responses revealed that co-workers and continuing education programs are the most important sources for knowledge and information that influence practice. While academic journals are perceived by practitioners to be relatively unimportant sources for such knowledge, research findings on the background and effectiveness of interventions, make up the primary content that appears to affect social work practice. The findings suggest that formal research knowledge is important but that it is primarily accessed through professional networks and training programs instead of directly from peer-reviewed journals. Social media platforms seemed to be insignificant sources for professional knowledge. These insights raise important questions about how social workers use social media and the role of occupational networks and associations for the dissemination of research findings. Finally, our findings suggest that agencies and researchers think more purposefully about the infusion of knowledge into practice through opportunities for professional socialization, the use of research briefs, and open-access, peer-reviewed journals.

Creating a Culture of Voting in Direct and Generalist Practice

Social workers have an ethical responsibility to be engaged in policy change, regardless of their practice area or specialization. Voter engagement and the importance of political power through voting is often overlooked in the literature as a valid and important component of social work practice. Creating a culture of nonpartisan voter engagement in practice settings can help empower individuals who have been historically and intentionally disenfranchised from our electoral system. Training for field instructors, faculty, and field staff is a key aspect of voter engagement in social work education. Unfortunately, social work education is unlikely to include substantive content on voter engagement or its connection to social work practice and impact. This article presents one component of a model for integrating voter engagement into social work education: the provision of training for field instructors on nonpartisan voter engagement at two universities over two years. Evaluation findings suggest that pre-existing levels of political efficacy affect the reaction of field instructors to nonpartisan voter engagement training. Furthermore, findings indicate that field instructors who receive voter engagement training are more likely to serve as resources for their students and to consider voter engagement as part of their own practice. We offer evidence on the important role field educators can play in the success of the larger national effort to integrate voter engagement in social work education. Increasing awareness of what social workers, nonprofit, and public agencies are allowed--or even required--to do is a critical first step.