The importance of specific professions for human rights realization is increasingly recognized. Journalists, teachers, and civil servants are all considered to play a role because their work affects individual rights. This is also the case for social workers. The connection between social work and human rights is evident in the large amount of literature explaining how human rights relate to social work. At the same time there is more attention for human rights localization. These fields of knowledge are related: social workers are local professionals and if they start applying human rights in their work this may influence human rights localization. This article contributes to existing debates on human rights localization by reflecting on the potential role of social workers in local human rights efforts in the Netherlands. Since human rights localization in general and human rights application in social work are recent phenomena in the Netherlands this provides a useful case study for a qualitative analysis on whether and how social workers can be regarded as actors in human rights localization. By connecting different actors that are said to play a role in human rights localization to proposed forms of human rights application by social workers this article identifies three possible roles for social workers in human rights localization: as human rights translators, as human rights advocates, and as human rights practitioners.
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Background: Differences in professional practice might hinder initiation of student participation during international placements, and thereby limit workplace learning. This study explores how healthcare students overcome differences in professional practice during initiation of international placements. Methods: Twelve first-year physiotherapy students recorded individual audio diaries during the first month of international clinical placement. Recordings were transcribed, anonymized, and analyzed following a template analysis approach. Team discussions focused on thematic interpretation of results. Results: Students described tackling differences in professional practice via ongoing negotiations of practice between them, local professionals, and peers. Three themes were identified as the focus of students’ orientation and adjustment efforts: professional practice, educational context, and individual approaches to learning. Healthcare students’ initiation during international placements involved a cyclical process of orientation and adjustment, supported by active participation, professional dialogue, and self-regulated learning strategies.Conclusions: Initiation of student participation during international placements can be supported by establishing a continuous dialogue between student and healthcare professionals. This dialogue helps align mutual expectations regarding scope of practice, and increase understanding of professional and educational practices. Better understanding, in turn, creates trust and favors meaningful students’ contribution to practice and patient care.
This dissertation describes a research project about the communication between communication vulnerable people and health care professionals in long-term care settings. Communication vulnerable people experience functional communication difficulties in particular situations, due to medical conditions. They experience difficulties expressing themselves or understanding professionals, and/or professionals experience difficulties understanding these clients. Dialogue conversations between clients and professionals in healthcare, which for example concern health-related goals, activity and participation choices, diagnostics, treatment options, and treatment evaluation, are, however, crucial for successful client-centred care and shared decision making. Dialogue conversations facilitate essential exchanges between clients and healthcare professionals, and both clients and professionals should play a significant role in the conversation. It is unknown how communication vulnerable people and their healthcare professionals experience dialogue conversations and what can be done to support successful communication in these conversations. The aim of this research is to explore how communication vulnerable clients and professionals experience their communication in dialogue conversations in long-term care and how they can best be supported in improving their communication in these conversations.
