Question 1
The site where I did my internship is called the Pediatric Developmental Center, and it is a multidisciplinary developmental service provider that takes care of the health needs, diagnostic and treatment services targeting children from birth to the age of eighteen. It is very important to the people who operate it at the Advocate Medical Group, Pediatric Developmental Center run by the Masonic Medical Center. The site gives services that foster the general well-being of children, and these services range from diagnostics in developmental pediatrics, child neurology, and child psychology as well as child psychiatry. At the same time, the site gives a complete medical evaluation and treatment that are based on occupational, speech and physical therapy. It does not matter the language that the children understand because there are bilingual services that have been made available. If a family meets the eligibility requirements, they can receive all the services required. Also, the facility accepts commercial insurance covers; sometimes they underwrite some services and call for help from relevant agencies where there is a need.
Everyone who is found at the organization plays various roles and they include patients, their families and the employees. The clients who come to the facility belong to different social groups and uphold a variety of belief systems that might be conflicting with those of the employees. All those who work at the facility have been trained to handle such clients in such a way that makes them feel comfortable. That is one of the reasons the services provided here have been diversified and are offered in both Spanish and English because these are the most prevalent languages that are used by most clients. There have been instances where I have attended to children who have linguistic challenges in any language of communication that I could understand. There was a time when a case of an autistic child was brought to me; he was Hispanic, and the only few words he was able to mumble were in Hispanic. Such as the times when everyone working at the site is expected to be proficient in at least two languages, Hispanic, and English. In case one does not understand the language spoken by the client then an interpreter is called. The clientele as well as staff is expected to at least understand each other in as far as language is concerned. And after all, communication and proper understanding of the needs of the client are essential in offering proper or efficient medical care.
The site is very important to the people who operate it because in one way or another they can come to the help of their clients and families. They influence the lives of their clients and families in one way or another because through the institution individual actions and decisions of everyone are shaped. Many parents get stressed out when they are handling special children and lack the knowledge that will help them to effectively attend to the needs of their children. At the same time, all the employees are often excited when they put a smile on their client’s faces; and especially their parents who lack the required knowledge on how to handle children facing growth and developmental challenges. Everyone who works at the facility is always ready to help in empowering families, educating them and also advising them on the best practices regarding their children and recommending support groups that are helpful to families.
Question 2
It has been increasingly noted that all matters concerning health sciences, education as well as services are sociological in nature. A hospital or healthcare facility handles people from all backgrounds and can have an impact on the lives of individuals. That is how human beings are believed to be social in nature, whatever they do, how they do it and what they say always leaves a mark in another’s life. It is these daily interactions that form the basics of pediatric services because what a pediatrician or anyone who attends to children with health problems does will have an impact on individual sick children as well as their families.
A sociological approach to pediatric services and children health starts from the foundations upon which findings of the problems are derived. For instance, to understand autism, how it is experienced and managed, it is important to find out how best to go about treating the symptoms and what the intended results are after treatment has been administered (Halpern, 1988). At the same time, that is where professional help comes into play but then should be given with a lot of precaution. At any given time, one is expected to perform various tasks targeting different clients with very different problems. And even if they had similar problems they were unique from each other. For instance, at a given day, my supervisor could give me different tasks to perform. There are times I could handle children with autism and also attend to patients having other mental problems. I could prepare visual supports for these different groups, and they were expected to best suit the needs of every client. Depending on the problem a client was battling, I was expected to help in their treatment by formulating the most practical and workable approach of dealing with their problems.
Also, the work done by the site can be seen as interventions that focus on the child, their health, illnesses as pertains to their sociological contexts such as their homes, schools and their general living spaces. A sociological perspective to childcare employs analytical tools that are used as a way of reflection that is helpful in looking at health conditions and understanding them (Halpern, 1988). In the context of social pediatrics, a whole family or whole community approach is used in identifying a child’s medical problem and designing interventions that involve the people with whom they live. It was very important to have a look at the family setup of the clients who came to the facility to make the correct assessment of their conditions (Corsaro, 1992). A child may be recommended for admission not because they cannot get competent care at home, but because they need to be kept at the facility for further examination or perhaps away from the triggers of the questionable behavior they exhibit. A child may be suffering from attention deficit deficiency syndrome and may be their behavior gets out of control when they are around some family members. Therefore, in order to handle any given condition, it is imperative to look at all the social factors that might act as triggers of the conditions in an effort to know how best to structure their treatment programs
Sometimes it became more important to find a correlation between behaviors exhibited by several children especially when they have shared symptoms. Children suffering from attention-deficit deficiency syndrome or autism exhibit similar character traits in as much as they may vary in one way or another. It is for that simple reason that it became part of my routine to break free from individual biases. That is where interpretive theory came in handy because it is easier to relate different cases and then develop the best practice on how to handle other clients (Corsaro, 1992). Individual cases might be unique, but there are shared characteristics that can lead to proper diagnosis and prescription simply by relating different cases. The process can be summed up as socialization because it takes place in a social realm because the different cultural routines of children can best be related to one another through an interpretive approach that draws reference from several cases.
Question 3
Whenever there is an effort to solve a problem in society, there are different ways in which people choose to go about finding solutions. Many choose to look at the consequences as a way of finding the reasons why some things happen the way they do and that is where sociological perspectives come in (Halpern, 1988). In the context of handling children with various medical or health issues, pediatricians always want to find out whether the problems are natural or manmade. And it is at this point where sociological perspectives come into play. It is important to know how a medical condition developed so as to devise the best treatment program that can contain the situation.
In the context of pediatrics and what went on during my internship, it became evident that the most practical of all sociological perspectives that were used was symbolic interactionism. It is a sociological perspective that employs the use of symbolic meanings derived from sociological interactions and that happens in a hospital setting all the time (Halpern 1988). All the clients I attended to were unique in their personal rights, and it was my role to identify the various symbols that I could use to get to the bottom of their problems. I encountered a case where a young girl with slight intellectual disability disorder was very afraid of dogs, and at the sight of one, she could get hysterical. My supervisor decided to use a dog as a therapeutic measure of treating her. She was exposed to a dog and despite her fear of it, it was agreed that her treatment could entail something she feared as a way of helping her become less afraid. In her case, a symbol of a dog was very important in drawing an interpretation and reaction from her so as to establish how best to handle her disorder. Even if only words are used without having to use any medication, the meanings associated with them are predominant symbols in helping solve related health problems.
Also, the organization is structured in such a way that roles are assigned to different people, and everyone is expected to deliver the expected results (Corsaro, 1992). A meeting is normally held, and the site extern gives both interns and externs different roles to play to ensure the objectives of the facility are met, and the needs of all the clients are met. There are people who are reported to and who make major decisions. For instance, as an intern, I was made to perform different tasks and learn a lot more. There are times I was tasked with preparing visual support for children with autism, and sometimes I could help in scoring the BASC- 2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System that helps keep track of the progress of all children who come to the facility for some years. That only shows how important the social structure of the organization was and even if an intern leaves, a record of the work they did remains helpful for future employees or interns like me.
It is imperative to note that the institutional environment in which one works plays a very critical role in determining how work is done. The site where I worked had its operations structured in such a way that everyone had enough work to do that added up to the overall goal of the facility. Regardless of everyone, employees and clients alike having their diverse beliefs, values, and assumptions; the bottom line is that the competent, diverse cultural environment gives everyone enough room to do their work and meet the expectations of the facility (Halpern, 1988). And the most important lesson that I learned from the exercise was that I was made to perform different tasks during different days of the week, that shows how smoothly and efficiently work was done at the facility so much so that people could change workstations yet perform optimally.
References
Corsaro, W. A. (1992) Interpretive Reproduction in Children’s Peer Cultures. Social Psychology Quarterly. Vol. 55, No. 2, 160- 177
Halpern, S. A. (1988). American pediatrics: The Social Dynamics of Professionalism, 1880- 1980. Berkeley: University of California Press
