En kvalitativ studie av berättelser om försörjningstagares hälsa - Biståndshandläggarnas perspektiv
This study is featuring six social welfare officer's stories about client's health and the organization’s resources regarding health. The aim of this study is to analyze how the social welfare officer´s describe their client´s health. We are using semi structured interviews and discourse analysis. Our theoretical point of view is social constructivism and street-level bureaucracy. The result of the study contains three different conclusions. The first one argues that the social worker divides the clients in to categories to make them manageable to the organization, furthermore ascribing them different identities. The second one is the social worker's furtherance of the client's health containing both possibilities and limitations. The possibilities are public assistance in the form of health care on prescription and working with the client's motivation to further their own health. The limitations are the subsistence level and the client's own priorities making it difficult to lead a healthy life. The third conclusion of the study concerns the social worker's ideas regarding changes in the organizations to further the client's health. The social workers are further describing suggestions to changes such as education, informative meetings, and granting more funds to activities just to mention a few examples.
Narrating Significant Experience: Reflective Accounts and the Production of (Self) Knowledge
Notwithstanding the rise of evidence-based practice, other tendencies within social work scholarship are also discernible. One of these is the study of the everyday, routine accomplishment of practice, drawing on microsociological methods and techniques. In this article, I apply techniques drawn from narrative and discourse analysis to the study of reflective practice accounts, which hold an important place in social work education. In particular, it is relevant to examine the form that reflective accounts take and the rhetorical and narrative devices deployed within them to accomplish a competent professional identity. My argument is not that such accounts of practice are untruthful, rather I propose that we would do well to move beyond taking texts (and talk) for granted and treating language as merely the medium for expressing inner thoughts and feelings. Social work should take seriously the need to explore its modes of representation and to cultivate a more self-conscious approach to the way professional and client identities are produced in practice.
Urea removal strategies for dialysate regeneration in a wearable artificial kidney.
The availability of a wearable artificial kidney (WAK) that provides dialysis outside the hospital would be an important advancement for dialysis patients. The concept of a WAK is based on regeneration of a small volume of dialysate in a closed-loop. Removal of urea, the primary waste product of nitrogen metabolism, is the major challenge for the realization of a WAK since it is a molecule with low reactivity that is difficult to adsorb while it is the waste solute with the highest daily molar production. Currently, no efficient urea removal technology is available that allows for miniaturization of the WAK to a size and weight that is acceptable for patients to carry. Several urea removal strategies have been explored, including enzymatic hydrolysis by urease, electro-oxidation and sorbent systems. However, thus far, these methods have toxic side effects, limited removal capacity or slow removal kinetics. This review discusses different urea removal strategies for application in a wearable dialysis device, from both a chemical and a medical perspective.