Guest Post - "So why are you getting two masters degrees?" by Lisa Foster (Dec ’16)

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.