Month: April 2013

Research colleagues that I enjoyed working with on this project.

Speaking, Hearing and Understanding the Stories We Hold as Health Care Providers
Patricia McGillicuddy, Tracy Johnson, Phyllis Marie Jensen, Margaret I. Fitch, Merle Audrey Jacobs

The authors focus on the results of a qualitative study by a team of social work and nursing researchers investigating the nature and extent of vicarious traumatization in the work experience of 20 physicians, nurses, and social workers during professional training and in clinical practice.  The authors take a qualitative, narrative approach to understanding the professional care experiences and workplace context reflected in stories that are remembered as difficult, unresolved, or worrisome. A number of recurring themes emerged from the research as contributing to the development of vicarious traumatization and aiding or hindering its resolution.
There was significant overlap among both the themes and the nature of the stories told among the professions interviewed. The deliberative delineation of these themes in education, mentorship and practice may assist in recognizing and ameliorating traumatic effect and enhancing hope and pride. This points to the need for heightened awareness and interdisciplinary education focused on the emotional impacts of working with patients/clients in health care team settings and the powerful potential of storytelling.

http://www.casw-acts.ca/en/csw-abstracts

Information Release by Canadian Friends of Burma – April 26, 2013 (for the full release please view guest blog on this site)

Ottawa – An 11-member Burma parliamentary delegation visited Ottawa this week in exchange of the Canadian parliamentary delegation sent off to Burma earlier this year.

A day before their departure, the delegation met the executive members of CFOB Board of Directors at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa on April 26, 2013,

Executive board members of CFOB who met the delegation are as follows:

1.     Dr. Merle Jacobs (Chairperson)
2.    Mr. Timothy Zaw Zaw  (Vice-Chairperson)
3.    Ms. Thet Thet  Htun (Secretary)
4.    Mr. Tin Maung Htoo

In terms of my visit, I found all members to be interested in education for the peoples of Burma. The females MPs and I had a chance of speaking 1:1. Their concerns included economic development which would help the population. Having not spoken Burmese for decades, I was able to understand most of the discussion but could only speak a few sentences. This meeting was productive and informative. I provided a copy of my book Women’s Work to each member; sending one to Daw Aung  Suu Kyi.

Collegiality is a research area of interest. I have looked at this issue as it related to professionalism within nursing, a female dominated profession.

My first survey in 1994, some 19 years ago, provided data that started the process in the area of collegial .

The analysis from my data provided original and multiple insights about contemporary female occupational cultures. It is disheartening to find out from colleagues (Lister, 2013; Brinkert, 2010) how women’s work environments are at a decline in many ways. The implication of work milieu in current research associates this environment with negative professional behaviours and quality of patient care.

Most mainstream studies on the nursing profession – usually the only available texts – tend to adopt a simplistic framework of “problems and prospects”, whereas my research has assembled data regarding the unhealthy contradictions perpetrated by the professional/ collegial values and routine practices. Here, however, we see the social reproductions of institutionalized injustice, notably the ethos of white superiority. The silent voices of the “racialized” others speak loudly to the dominant culture of compliance that is protected in self-serving professions. Rather than debunk mythologies, I consider those themes that have been woefully overlooked in studies of professions—social justice. Justice, an increasingly significant theme in public policy and multicultural programs, provides a direction that is long overdue in addressing micro conflicts within macro contexts.

1. RBC article Kathy Tomlinson                                    
2. Advocate! Click on  MP  – as you owe this to yourself.  This is not fair.   
3. Our students pay at least $1000.00 a course, take 20 courses and then cannot find work in Canada.

Awakening to the news today, and after speaking to a graduate student, I found myself not only upset but angry.
The IT  professor on CBC’s The Current was not in the least upset that his students would have to upskill   – as he said, because their jobs could go to less expensive labour markets somewhere out there in our global world. My first question out loud – then why are you teaching them YOUR course which pays you and will cost them?

The RBC ‘s action to use a third party is not about pitting worker against worker but points to a larger problem.  Canadian companies in Canada are taking jobs from Canadians and are providing jobs in foreign countries while selling their products to Canadians. Help me understand. Some on the left do not wish to talk about ‘foreign workers’ as it involves issues of social justice, but please look at our population in Toronto. These are the children of ‘foreign immigrants’ who need to work in Toronto. This is not about migrant workers, this is about profit at all cost. On the right, they just don’t talk about bad social policies.

The bottom line, we need work for our graduates. Thay cannot find work even at Tim Horton’s  (where you find them studying) who received premission to bring in temporary workers – 15,000 of them in 2012.
When I came to Canada, a racialized woman it was about a country where one came to develop and contribute. Today, we ask new Canadians to come, and to work, yet the very talent that brought them to Canada is out sourced to countries like India.

As well, our graduates should not have to go to China or India to find work while their jobs are  taken to these countries by third parties who are also registered with our government to insource 15% cheaper labour.

The  Harper Government is responsible for this deplorable sitution, and while MPs discuss this issue -Canadians are displaced from their jobs. This vision of cheap labour is outdated and careless.
54,500 jobs lost in March. Canadians have been careless as well. We need to write our MPs and hold them responisble for this and other actions. After all we pay them and they need to be held accountable.

This is a platform for my thoughts, analysis and understandings of the world in which we live. My views are based on the reading I have done over the years.
Of course I know there are many roads to Rome. However, I have lived most of my life in Canada and do not know much about roads to Rome. 🙂
Great meeting me on this blog. Have a great day and welcome.

Social justice + equity = a better life together .