News Archive
-
Life post-graduation can be intimidating, but it does not have to be. Here are 10 tips designed to help recent graduates navigate life after completing their MSW or MSN.
A host of emotions surround graduation. Pride, excitement and anticipation are as commonplace as anxiety, fear and uncertainty as graduates close one chapter and boldly step into a new one. For many, finding not just a job — but the right job — is a top priority.
-
In ordinary times, hospice social worker Andrea Nava is what people would call a “hugger.” The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work alumna maintains a warm closeness with her clients and their families, and those familial displays of affection are part of the regular day.
But during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hospice care agencies and nursing care facilities enforcing strict social distancing policies to minimize the risk of infection, Nava has had to adapt.
-
Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) student Anthony Lista, RN, was just learning the ins and outs of his new job as director of population health for a large nursing home operator, Genesis Healthcare, when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Then everything changed, including his job duties. Lista answered the call to serve as a member of his employer’s infection prevention team. The position focuses on reducing the spread of the new coronavirus among a nationwide network of nursing homes.
-
MSW alumna of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Megan Ford (name has been changed to protect anonymity), works the graveyard shift at a Los Angeles County hospital, five days a week. She has been a medical social worker for 17 years, and under more stress in the last six weeks than over her entire career.
-
In March 2020, Los Angeles Councilmember Gil Cedillo asked Jose Ruiz, MSW ’17, if he could upscale his community garden to provide 300 Emergency Grab-n-Go food bags each week to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Ruiz had just last year taken .16 acres of space in the Westlake neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles and created a farming community.
-
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic has changed much about our daily lives, the rhythms of life and death continue.
Christian Diaz, MSW ’13, a medical social worker at a hospital serving the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County, helps patients and their families cope with some of life’s most challenging moments.
-
A February 2020 research summit on moral injury, hosted by the Military and Veterans Programs (MVP) at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, expanded understanding of this subject, as scientists discussed its applicability for treatment of trauma both inside and outside a military context.
-
The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work has many alumni working on the front lines in hospitals across the country. Allison Trapp (name has been changed to protect anonymity) MSW alumna, has been a social worker for almost 20 years. She works in a hospital ICU in the southern United States.
-
As an emergency room social worker, Veronica Annette Acosta, MSW ’17, provides emotional support for families of patients who have passed away. Under normal circumstances, these conversations happen about five times a month. Under COVID-19, she is having them four times a day.
“It is extremely overwhelming,” said Acosta. “It is starting to take an emotional toll.”
-
On February 14, 2018, a 19-year-old gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and opened fire, killing 17 students and faculty members, and injuring 18 others.