The Role of Social Workers in Nursing Homes With Nancy Kusmaul, PhD, MSW & Lynn Friss Feinberg, MSW

The Role of Social Workers in Nursing Homes With Nancy Kusmaul, PhD, MSW & Lynn Friss Feinberg, MSW

Nursing homes and COVID-19 are today's hot topics. With mounting cases of COVID-19, nursing homes have faced many challenges, especially with providing social services. On top of helping older adults adjust to their new life in a supportive care setting and advocating for their rights and needs, social workers are faced with ethical dilemmas, stress, and fears for resident safety. What can we do about it?

Today, we are joined by Nancy Kusmaul, PhD, MSW, and Lynn Friss Feinberg, MSW, to discuss social workers' role in nursing homes.

Part One of ‘The Role Of Social Workers In Nursing Homes’

Nancy Kusmaul, PhD, MSW, is an Associate Professor in the Baccalaureate Social Work program at UMBC. She received her PhD from the University at Buffalo School of Social Work and her MSW from the University of Michigan. Dr. Kusmaul worked in nursing homes and hospitals for more than a decade. Her research focuses on organizational culture, trauma-informed care, and the impact of trauma experienced on the workforce. She is interested in direct care workers' experience in organizations, particularly Certified Nursing Assistants in nursing homes. She is a 2019-2020 Health and Aging Policy Fellow with Senator Ron Wyden and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She is a member of the Baltimore County Elder Abuse Coalition and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). She co-chairs the Aging Committee for the Maryland Chapter of NASW, and she is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Lynn Friss Feinberg is a Senior Strategic Policy Advisor at the AARP Public Policy Institute, responsible for family caregiving and long-term care issues. She came to AARP from the National Partnership for Women & Families, serving as the first Director of the Campaign for Better Care. Previously, she served as the Deputy Director of the National Center on Caregiving at the San Francisco-based Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA). At FCA, she directed the National Consensus Project for Caregiver Assessment and led the first 50-state study on publicly-funded caregiving programs in the U.S. She has published and lectured widely on family care policy and practice. She has held leadership positions on numerous advisory boards and committees, including the American Bar Association's Commission on Law and Aging, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee on Family Caregiving for Older Adults. Ms. Feinberg is a past Chair of the American Society on Aging (ASA) Board of Directors and a past Chair of the Public Policy Committee at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA).

In 2007-2008, Ms. Feinberg served as the John Heinz Senate Fellow in Aging in the office of former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. She received the ASA Leadership Award in 2006, and the Paul Nathanson Distinguished Advocate Award in 2015 from Justice in Aging for her career work on family care issues. Ms. Feinberg holds a master's degree in social welfare and gerontology from the University of California at Berkeley.

COVID-19 spreads easily in nursing homes and older adults living in these facilities (residents) are at the greatest risk of death if there is an outbreak. This is why a lot of attention has been focused on keeping residents safe. Not only the nursing homes experiencing a shortage of PPE, but the implementation of visitation restrictions made it challenging for them to communicate with the resident's family members. We didn't have a national strategy to deal with a pandemic, and because of all of these things, nursing homes were hit hard by COVID-19.

While it's critically important to have adequate nursing certified nursing assistants, we would all agree with that if we want to improve the quality of care or people residing in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, COVID-19 has pointed out that we need to have more social support, more emotional support, and connection to the outside world. Family and friends are critically important, particularly at the end of life. That is a key component of both health care and long-term care, particularly since long term care is someone’s home!

Social workers are uniquely trained to recognize the importance of family support and the social aspects of care. We need trained social workers who are willing to get involved in national conversations to ensure that we have high-quality social work that includes emotional support at the community level.

Read the full article here: https://melissabphd.com/podcast-blog/

How to Connect More with Lynn Friss Feinberg and Nancy Kusmaul

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-friss-feinberg-979baa11
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nancy_kusmaul

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-kusmaul-7778a19/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FeinbergLynn

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