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| Lisa Foster (Dec '16) |
Answering
the question of what it means to be a dual professional or to work
interprofessionally is something that I have difficulties with. Family and friends are constantly asking me
why I am pursuing master’s degrees in both social work and public health and
how those two degrees will form one career.
I usually just give a broad answer explaining that the two degrees
compliment each other or in a roundabout way, I explain that it will help me to
best help the communities I hope to work in.
I have not yet developed a strong sense of how to market myself
professionally. For any individual, it
can be challenging to create a strong professional identity, but this struggle
is even more relevant to dual degree professionals. It can be really challenging to unify two
separate fields in a way that employers, family, and friends can
understand. Though as I progress through
the University of Georgia’s Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health
dual degree program, I am forming an understanding of what it means to work
interprofessionally, both in general and for me personally.
The concept
of being a dual professional is easy enough to understand; if a professional is
someone who has acquired a degree in a specific field, then a dual professional
is someone who has obtained two degrees in different fields (Scanlon, 2011). However, the uncertainties come in when
thinking about what it means to actually work interprofessionally. Do you identify with one profession more than
the other? Do you form a new identity using
both professions? What will your title
be (are you a social worker or a public health official)? These questions will be answered differently
depending on the individual, but the idea is that dual professionals are
individuals with identities drawn from two professional and academic domains
(Whitchurch, 2009). Oftentimes, working
interprofessionally is seen solely as a team effort. We think of a group of individuals from
different fields collaborating and sharing their specific knowledge and skills
with each other. However, a dual degree
individual is also an interprofessional, as they can pull from their own diverse
knowledge and take a collaborative approach to problem solving. Working interprofessionally means these
individuals practice in a way that provides a cohesive response to the needs of
a client, family, community, or population (Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel,
2011). As the demands of our society
become more complex, working interprofessionally is becoming imperative. In order to provide the best client care,
professionals will need a wide range of human service knowledge either by
collaborating with professionals from other fields or by becoming proficient in
multiple fields themselves. Although
this seems like common sense, it took a personal experience for me to fully
understand the need for working interprofessionally.
When deciding on graduate programs, I did not always have
the mindset that a dual degree program was the route to go. I was passionate about working in the field
of social work so I only applied to Master of Social Work programs. I knew the University of Georgia offered a
dual degree program for social work and public health, but I was not yet convinced
that getting two master’s degrees was necessary or worth it. The summer prior to starting the Master of
Social Work program, I went to South Africa to work with orphans and
vulnerable children in an impoverished community in Mpumalanga. I did not know what to expect when going on
this trip, but what I found was my passion for working in the communities of
developing countries. The community I
worked in, and South Africa as a whole, has an alarmingly high orphan and
vulnerable children population with very little influence of social services to
care for them. There were no orphanages
or children’s homes in the area I was in, just thousands of children left on
their own to fend for themselves. I
questioned why the government was not doing anything about this and where were
the orphanages or children’s homes? I
saw a dire need for social workers in the community, but also had the harsh
realization that social work could only go so far. These children were orphaned because the
majority of their parents died from HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, or other treatable
diseases and while social workers can assist with the aftermath of these
diseases, steps need to be taken towards preventing them.
Once I returned from my summer
abroad and started the social work program, I heard more about the social work
and public health dual degree program.
With the new outlook I had from my time spent in South Africa, I did not
have to think twice about applying to the dual degree program. I now understood that being a dual
professional would greatly benefit my career goals and the communities I hope
to work in. Specifically the fields of
social work and public health are particularly compatible and beneficial to
each other as they share many core values.
Both fields value enhancing social and economic justice, focusing on
oppressed and vulnerable populations, and eliminating disparities between
various populations. Furthermore, the
two degrees complement each other so well by integrating public health’s focus
on prevention and social work’s focus on intervention. This tag-team of intervention and prevention
is exactly what communities need in order to improve their overall health and well
being. Being in the Community
Empowerment and Program Development concentration within the social work
program and the Health Promotion and Behavior concentration within the public
health program provides me with an interdisciplinary learning experience. Additionally, this unique dual degree program
is training me to work on both micro and macro levels. I hope to use the interdisciplinary skills I
gain from this dual degree program to work in communities in developing
countries alongside community members or with a non-profit located in the
United States that has an international focus.
As previously stated, the complex societal
issues facing the clients, families, communities, and populations we will work
with make it vital for dual professionalism and working interprofessionally. Having master’s degrees in both social work
and public health will allow me to work interprofessionally as an
individual. I will be able to pull from
the knowledge I have of both fields in order to take an integrated approach to
serving my client and communities’ needs.
This need for an integrated approach to problem solving was exactly what
I saw during my time in South Africa. I
saw strong, determined, and intelligent community members lacking the resources
they needed to fulfill their potential.
I saw people in need of healthcare with no clinics for them to go
to. I saw youth on the streets with
nothing to do, which led to bad decisions.
I saw those who were desperately in need of health education, but no one
was there to teach them. I saw great
need for social workers and public health professionals, but an even greater
need for the two fields to combine and work together. I saw first-hand the necessity of dual
professionalism and working interprofessionally.
Learn more
about Lisa Foster.
References
Interprofessional Education
Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core
competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert
panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.
Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/ipecreport.pdf
Scanlon, L. (ed.) (2011).
“Becoming” a Professional an Interdisciplinary Analysis of Professional
Learning. Lifelong Learning Book Series 16. DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9 0
Whitchurch, C. (2009). The
rise of the blended professional in higher education: a comparison between the
United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. Higher Education 58:3.
