GEVA, Esther, Allan BARSKY and Fern WESTERNOFF, eds., INTERPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE WITH DIVERSE POPULATIONS

Abstract

GEVA, Esther, Allan BARSKY and Fern WESTERNOFF, eds., INTERPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE WITH DIVERSE POPULATIONS. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corp., Inc., 2000, 211pp., $67.50 hardcover.. A psychologist, a social worker, and a speech-language pathologist produced this edited volume. It is a casebook about interprofessional, diversity-informed practice. This text is designed to help students and professionals connect theory and practice in a way that is ....detailed, multifaceted, and realistic. The editors see this as an educational tool that can be used: * As a personal resource for practicing professionals; * As a primary textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on diversity and interprofessional practice; * As a casebook for professional development workshops, case discussions, and other forms of in-service training for various types of health, mental health, social welfare, and educational agencies and institutions; and * As a library resource for supplementary research and reading for students who do not use this book as a primary text. Chapter 1 looks at interprofessional practice in terms of team constituents and team dynamics and then analyzes the special issues that develop when clients come from diverse backgrounds. Chapters 2-9 look at different contexts of practice [mental health, neurological disorders, child abuse, education, addiction, and criminal justice]. The students, clients, and patients in the cases represent a range of ages, presenting problems, cultures, sexual orientations and genders, family dynamics, and other socioeconomic circumstances. A final chapter offers a summary of key issues and a case for readers to ponder in terms of interprofessional, diversity-informed perspectives. The editors hope that this casebook uses cases to bridge the gap between classroom theory and practice/implementation in the community. Interprofessional practice is also sometimes called multiprofessional or interdisciplinary practice. There are a number of axes along which diversity-informed practice takes place, such as culture, race, socioeconomic status, religion, mental and physical health status, gender, sexual orientation, language, and political identification. There are many challenges to this sort of very difficult and challenging research, and the editors list these challenges as power, politics, funding, territoriality, educational biases, humanistic concerns, and legal issues. The case studies that are used to illustrate interprofessional, diversity-informed practice are many and varied: the case of an African American woman with traumatic brain injury, the too-quiet adolescent, crisis intervention with a gay Irish American man, educational issues with a Vietnamese Canadian child, the case of a deaf Taiwanese youth, theft by a Cree woman and victim-offender mediation versus healing circle, the case of an Algerian adolescent with antisocial behavior, and neuropsychological and interprofessional practice with a Latina student with epilepsy. …