This program will discuss the relationship between the client, psychiatrist and clinician or licensed clinical social worker. It will discuss the critical role of the clinician or licensed clinical social worker in educating and involving the client in the medication decision process and making sure the psychiatrist has the information needed to make an informed decision about medication.
Learning Objectives:
Learn how clients can benefit from social worker involvement in client medication use and how to encourage clients to take and adhere to medication.
Understand situations or behaviors that may interfere with a client`s medication use and how best to overcome these barriers.
Recognize that social workers and doctors have different definitions of competence within their profession. Learn to understand the professional culture within which doctors function in order to more effectively collaborate with them.
Understand the way in which a perceived power imbalance between clients and professionals can lead to non-adherence to medication, and how collaboration with clients can preclude such an issue.
Faculty:
Ron J. Diamond, MS, MD
Ron J. Diamond, MS, MD, for more than 25 years has been involved in the community-based treatment of persons with severe and persistent mental illness. Over the years this has included issues of staff training, staff roles, ethics, role of coercion, medication compliance, psychiatric administration and system design. He has also been very involved in how to teach non-medical staff, consumers and their families about psychotropic medication. His current research focuses on the quality of life of people with psychiatric disability. He is increasingly interested in how to integrate concepts of recovery and cultural competence into day-to-day clinical competence. The Mental Health Center of Dane County, one of the core training sites for psychiatry residents, is a national model in community psychiatry providing culturally competent services to both children and adults. He has written two books on psychopharmacology including “Instant Psychopharmacology” (2002).