Professional and Personal Learning From the Caregiver, Essay Example

I think my most significant professional learning from the whole exercise was probably the importance of making the whole process of care fit, culturally speaking. It’s all very well and fine to talk about how one should take care of the elderly, and what to do and what not to do, but what about cultural considerations? Mr. Joseph, the caregiver I interviewed, was a very learned man, and drew from anthropology to talk about “high context” cultures, cultures that rely on context to bolster communication: in other words, communication is not simply the words that are said, but also what they imply. “Low context” cultures, by contrast, rely more on the actual words, rather than the subtext, for communication. This is a relatively basic difference, but it is of profound significance, inasmuch as it affects so much of how people in these cultures interact with each other and with outsiders. For that matter, different cultures have different ideas about the position that elders should have in society, and this certainly factors into the whole process of care as well (Dein & Huline-Dickens, 1997). In fact, some culture groups seem better able than others to care for elderly relatives (Roth, Haley, Owen, Clay, & Goode, 2001).

The most important personal learning, for me, was the importance of person-environment fit, as per the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis, 2005, p. 4). This is a trait theory, one that emphasizes innate characteristics, and it helped me to understand that traits in my personality make me an ideal fit for the work that I am doing (p. 4). Essentially, it is important to have a good fit between one’s personality and the environment in which one works: this is what maximizes the efficacy of the dynamic interplay between the two (pp. 4-5). Understanding this was certainly very validating for me, inasmuch as it helped me to understand how I can maximize the fit between environmental factors and my own personal predilections and predispositions, in order to increase my efficacy. By so doing, I can fulfill my great passion, namely helping people by means of marriage and family therapy.

References

Dawis, R. V. (2005). The Minnesota theory of work adjustment. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 3-23). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Dein, S., & Huline-Dickens, S. (1997). Cultural aspects of aging and psychotherapy. Aging & Mental Health, 1(2), pp. 112-120. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/

Roth, D. L., Haley, W. E., Owen, J. E., Clay, O. J., & Goode, K. T. (2001). Latent growth models of the longitudinal effects of dementia caregiving: A comparison of African-American and White family caregivers. Psychology and Aging, 16(3), pp. 427-436. DOI: 10.1037/0882-7974.16.3.427