Health & social work
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Health & social work · May 2006
ReviewA practitioner's response to the new health privacy regulations.
The established professional practice requiring informed consent for the disclosure of personal health information with its implied right to privacy suffered a serious setback with the first federal privacy initiative of the Bush administration. The new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (P. ⋯ As the privacy paradigm shifts to balance the business interests of the health care industry with those of individual patients, this policy presents new challenges for protecting the confidential relationship between the practitioner and the patient. This article reviews the significant modifications in the new HIPAA regulations, briefly critiques these changes, and suggests strategies for practitioners to manage these changes.
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Health & social work · Feb 2006
Baby Think It Over: evaluation of an infant simulation intervention for adolescent pregnancy prevention.
In an intervention aimed at showing students the amount of responsibility involved in caring for an infant, 353 predominantly ninth-grade and Latino students carried the Baby Think It Over simulation doll in an intervention and completed matched pre- and posttest measures. Statistically significant gains were found on the total score and the impact of having a baby on academics, social life, and other family members; emotional risks; understanding and handling an infant's crying; and apprehension of the amount of responsibility involved in infant care. On a posttest-only measure, 108 participants reported statistically significant differences before and after carrying the doll with regard to the age at which they wished to have a child, their career and education plans, and the perceived interference of an infant with those education and career plans and their social life.
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Health & social work · Nov 2005
Developing a spiritual assessment toolbox: a discussion of the strengths and limitations of five different assessment methods.
Increasingly, social workers are being called on to conduct spiritual assessments, yet few assessment methods have appeared in academic literature. This article reviews five complementary assessment approaches that have recently been developed to highlight different facets of clients' spiritual lives. ⋯ An overview of each approach is provided along with a discussion of its relative strengths and limitations. The aim here is to familiarize readers with a repertoire of spiritual assessment tools so that the most appropriate assessment method in a given client-practitioner setting can be selected.