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In This Issue:
Colleen Foster, center, joins Susan Larrabee, right, and Carole Chapin, RN, of Care Coordination, for a tour of the Medical Intensive Care Unit.
The multidisciplinary teamwork that BWH and other hospitals practice daily is unfathomable in some parts of the world.
Colleen Foster, a social worker from Jamaica, visited last month to observe how social workers practice at BWH. BWH social workers sponsored her visit through their own funds.
“The thing that impressed her the most was the multidisciplinary care team,” said Susan Larrabee, MSW, LICSW, who met Foster last summer when she traveled to Jamaica to lead a social work training.
As a field, social work is still new in Jamaica, a country with nine HIV/AIDS social workers and an estimated 22,000 HIV-infected people. “In Jamaica, social workers practice in isolation,” Larrabee said. “They don’t even document in the patients’ charts. For her to feel she had a voice as a social worker in this large teaching hospital was amazing.”
During her week here, Foster spent time with many social workers, chaplaincy and in the medical library to experience as much as possible. She presented to social workers on the state of social work in Jamaica.
When BWH social workers asked Foster how they could help her, she said that many of her patients need clothing. Martha Burke, director of Social Work and Clinical Services, appointed a committee chaired by Paul Faircloth to organize shipments of second-hand clothing to Jamaica. Social workers and nurses in Care Coordination will participate on the committee.