Francis Mcdermott
Biographic Data
| ID | 1086477 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francis Mcdermott |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francis |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcdermott |
| SIGNATURE | MCDERMOTT F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9362-1441 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1939 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Oscillations, boundaries and ethical care
Policy and research acknowledge that the quality of end-of-life care in hospitals can be poor, with families reporting significant concerns regarding physical and psychosocial care. In order to design appropriate evidenced-based care approaches, we conducted qualitative research examining the perspectives of bereaved families of patients who received end-of-life care in our health network. This paper reports on ethical dilemmas facing practitione…
Paradoxes, contradictions, and dilemmas
This is a reflective and theoretical article that discusses the impact of COVID-19 on social work practice. The pandemic, which made its presence felt globally from early 2020, continues to have ongoing and significant consequences for lives, livelihoods, public health, and personal freedoms. We argue that, while its specific contours are yet to be comprehensively researched, let alone the final outcomes understood, the pandemic has presented opp…
International graduates of Australian social work education – where are they now
International student numbers entering Australian social work programs have consistently grown in recent years, and subsequent discourse has problematized their educational experiences. However, no known research has described this cohort after graduating or explored their post-study outcomes. An anonymous online survey was conducted with 49 recent Master of Social Work graduates from 16 Australian universities, coming from 15 countries. The stud…
Transitioning to Professional Practice
With increasing numbers of international students entering Australian social work programs, research has focused on the challenges of teaching these students due to perceived cultural differences and language comprehension. However, limited research has examined their experiences when transitioning to practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 international MSW graduates originating from 10 countries and residing across three Aus…
Australian Social Work
Developing a complexity-informed approach to hospital end-of-life care for people with dementia and their families
Little is known about the role of hospital social work during end-of-life care of older patients diagnosed with dementia. In Australia, hospital social work assessment and intervention have been predominantly framed through systems theories, which provide limited insight into the dynamics shaping intervention outcomes. Using a complexity-informed theoretical approach, this article draws from a study examining end-of-life transitions for people wi…
Impact of a Global Pandemic on Scope and Diversity of Social Work Research and Practice
The contents of the July (2021) Issue of Australian Social Work (ASW) are distinguished by a range and diversity of topics, notably: intellectual impairment (Catalano & Wilson, 2021); end-of-life c
Housing and Support Narratives of People Experiencing Mental Health Issues
Background: Choice, control, privacy, and security are widely reported housing preferences of mental health consumers, are associated with improved well-being and greater housing satisfaction, and are important for recovery. This paper describes housing and neighborhood experiences from a larger qualitative study that sought to learn with people experiencing mental health issues about their everyday lives in an Australian urban community. Methods…
Australian Social Work Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Social Work End-of-Life Care Interventions for Patients and their Families in Hospital
As the majority of Australians receive end-of-life care in hospitals, there is a need to examine the quality of social work interventions for dying patients and their families. Clinical data mining of 347 deceased patient’s files revealed different approaches to end-of-life interventions across one health network. Data demonstrate that although social workers are invaluable in providing emotional and practical assistance, greater awareness and ed…
Demonstrating Social Work Expertise
It is a characteristic of the development of social work theory that it frequently emerges from practice. For this and other reasons the profession places enormous emphasis on the capabilities and
Themed Issue on Social Work Education – Part 2
In 2017, Emeritus Professor John Lawrence published his six-volume autobiography, in which his highly significant achievements of over four decades of academic and intellectual leadership of the profession are recorded and accessible to all.Indeed
Researching Practice
Themed Issue on Social Work Education – Part 1
Celebrating 70 Years and Reflecting on the Challenges Ahead
Applying Research Evidence in Social Work Practice edited by MartinWebber. 2015
What factors influence older adults to discuss falls with their health‐care providers
OBJECTIVE: To identify from the older adults' perspective, the factors associated with discussion about falls with their general practitioners and other health professionals and the factors associated with initiation of these discussions. We explored the content of and barriers to discussion about falls. METHODS: A prospective cohort study where a baseline cross-sectional survey was followed by a survey 1 year later. Survey domains were drawn fro…
Why do hospitalized older adults take risks that may lead to falls
BACKGROUND: The behaviour of hospitalized older adults can contribute to falls, a common adverse event during and after hospitalization. OBJECTIVE: To understand why older adults take risks that may lead to falls in the hospital setting and in the transition period following discharge home. DESIGN: Qualitative research. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Hospital patients from inpatient medical and rehabilitation wards (n = 16), their informal caregivers …
A Review of the Efficacy and Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy and Short-Term Psychodynamic Therapy in the Treatment of Major Depression
A systematic review of the literature regarding the efficacy and effectiveness of cognitive-behaviour therapy and short-term psychodynamic therapy in the treatment of major depression in adults was conducted. This search of electronic databases (PsycArticles, PsycINFO, Social Services Abstracts and PsycLIT) was conducted between August and October 2011 and resulted in full text review of 13 publications. On balance the evidence, largely derived f…
Sound Continuing Bonds with the Deceased
This study examines music's relevance, including preloss music therapy, for 8 informal caregivers of people who died from cancer. The design was informed by constructivist grounded theory and included semistructured interviews. Bereaved caregivers were supported or occasionally challenged as their musical lives enabled a connection with the deceased. Music was often still used to improve mood and sometimes used to confront grief. Specific music, …
Using Social Work Theory and Values to Investigate the Implementation of Community Treatment Orders
This paper establishes the value of a social work investigation of good practice with people on Community Treatment Orders in the context of social work's longstanding interest in the ethical challenges of working with involuntary clients. The emancipatory values of social work were used to guide this research, thereby ensuring the participation of consumers and their families or carers. Critical social work theory provided an important theoretic…
Project Discovery
The health sector uses a “person-in-environment” perspective reflected in multidisciplinary teamwork to understand and influence human lives. This standpoint accords closely with social work's knowledge and theory base, recognising that material, economic, political, organisational, and social structures interact, creating a complex array of factors impacting on individuals and families. Practice research activities are an effective way of explor…
Social Work from Inside and Between Complex Systems
The twenty-first century presents social work with significant challenges. To address today's complex problems, social work must inform itself of advances in the knowledge base of the natural and social sciences, particularly those that explain the changing construction of different systems and the way the world works. These explanatory theories offer relevant understanding of the social, economic and ecological contexts within which social worke…
Death and the Dynamics of Group Life
This article reports qualitative analysis of data collected during psychoanalytically orientated group sessions after the death of members. This group, based in group analytic and existentialist theoretical perspectives, is for women with advanced breast cancer. We ask: how and why does the group keep going, even as its members leave it through death? Our interest in understanding the therapeutic factors generated by the co-therapists, group memb…
Social Work and the Body
This book brings sociological and neuroscientific perspectives on the body together to inform a new understanding of person-in-environment. It offers important new ways of working with people in vario
Social Work from Inside and Between Complex Systems
The twenty-first century presents social work with significant challenges. To address today's complex problems, social work must inform itself of advances in the knowledge base of the natural and social sciences, particularly those that explain the changing construction of different systems and the way the world works. These explanatory theories offer relevant understanding of the social, economic and ecological contexts within which social worke…
Music Therapy's Relevance in a Cancer Hospital Researched Through a Constructivist Lens
The constructivist research paradigm informed a research investigation on the relevance of music therapy in a cancer hospital that is, what did the music therapy do and did it help? Over 3 months, criterion sampling was used to elicit interpretations in 5 studies from 5 sources: 128 patients who participated, 27 patients who overheard or witnessed music therapy, 41 visitors, 61 staff, and the music therapist-researcher. Fifty-seven percent of the…
Using Social Work Theory and Values to Investigate the Implementation of Community Treatment Orders
This paper establishes the value of a social work investigation of good practice with people on Community Treatment Orders in the context of social work's longstanding interest in the ethical challenges of working with involuntary clients. The emancipatory values of social work were used to guide this research, thereby ensuring the participation of consumers and their families or carers. Critical social work theory provided an important theoretic…
Social work research
In this article those characteristics of research which make the research distinctively ‘social work research’ are discussed. In distinguishing social work research from sociological, psychological or anthropological research the question is also raised concerning what might be social work's particular contribution to research in the human sciences. In so doing, I discuss those aspects of the social work endeavour which constitute its particular …
Sound Continuing Bonds with the Deceased
This study examines music's relevance, including preloss music therapy, for 8 informal caregivers of people who died from cancer. The design was informed by constructivist grounded theory and included semistructured interviews. Bereaved caregivers were supported or occasionally challenged as their musical lives enabled a connection with the deceased. Music was often still used to improve mood and sometimes used to confront grief. Specific music, …
Project Discovery
The health sector uses a “person-in-environment” perspective reflected in multidisciplinary teamwork to understand and influence human lives. This standpoint accords closely with social work's knowledge and theory base, recognising that material, economic, political, organisational, and social structures interact, creating a complex array of factors impacting on individuals and families. Practice research activities are an effective way of explor…
Researching Practice
Theory into Practice
This article is drawn from a minor thesis presented for the Master of Urban Planning in 1982. It commences with comments upon the gap between theory and practice which is perceived to exist by many social work practitioners. It then goes on to examine how this gap was explored in recent research using four social planners as subjects. The research revealed that the subjects had constructed individual theories based upon values, beliefs and assump…
Transitioning to Professional Practice
With increasing numbers of international students entering Australian social work programs, research has focused on the challenges of teaching these students due to perceived cultural differences and language comprehension. However, limited research has examined their experiences when transitioning to practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 international MSW graduates originating from 10 countries and residing across three Aus…
Celebrating 70 Years and Reflecting on the Challenges Ahead
Who is to Control the Practice of Social Work
In this paper we note some of the problems surrounding the conflicted issue of social work student placements. We argue that, although on an espoused level fieldwork is considered to be at the ‘core’ of social work education, there appears to be increasing difficulty in acquiring suitable and sufficient fieldwork placements. The extent of this difficulty suggests the existence of a contradiction between espoused views about social work education …
War and the Catholic
War is on every horizon to-day-a black cloud that, coming nearer, resolves itself into a swarm of enemy aircraft bringing death from the skies.Fear of that black swarm is hypnotising half the civilised world, and there is no decent man or woman but detests the new horror it has brought into warfare, the Massacre of the Innocents. A dead or dying soldier on the battlefield is an ugly sickening fact, but it is possible to cover it with the decent c…
A Cognitive Approach to Social Science Research
This article, which draws upon material from a minor thesis completed for the degree of Master of Urban Planning, looks at the use of cognitive mapping as a research tool. Cognitive mapping has recently been developed in the field of Operations Research, management and amongst policy makers. This paper attempts to show how it may be applied effectively to social science research, particularly if used in combination with other more usual data gath…
Theory into Practice
This article is drawn from a minor thesis presented for the Master of Urban Planning in 1982. It commences with comments upon the gap between theory and practice which is perceived to exist by many social work practitioners. It then goes on to examine how this gap was explored in recent research using four social planners as subjects. The research revealed that the subjects had constructed individual theories based upon values, beliefs and assump…
Who is to Control the Practice of Social Work
In this paper we note some of the problems surrounding the conflicted issue of social work student placements. We argue that, although on an espoused level fieldwork is considered to be at the ‘core’ of social work education, there appears to be increasing difficulty in acquiring suitable and sufficient fieldwork placements. The extent of this difficulty suggests the existence of a contradiction between espoused views about social work education …
Social work research
In this article those characteristics of research which make the research distinctively ‘social work research’ are discussed. In distinguishing social work research from sociological, psychological or anthropological research the question is also raised concerning what might be social work's particular contribution to research in the human sciences. In so doing, I discuss those aspects of the social work endeavour which constitute its particular …
Understanding and Evaluating Qualitative Research
Qualitative research aims to address questions concerned with developing an understanding of the meaning and experience dimensions of humans’ lives and social worlds. Central to good qualitative research is whether the research participants’ subjective meanings, actions and social contexts, as understood by them, are illuminated. This paper aims to provide beginning researchers, and those unfamiliar with qualitative research, with an orientation …
Group work in the mental health field
This paper reviews outcome studies from groups facilitated for persons living with serious mental illness. Although the research base is limited (groups posing considerable methodological challenges), available studies show that, in general, group work is as effective as individual work, if not more so. This paper describes findings from studies of short‐term, long‐term and self‐help groups dealing with mood disorders, schizophrenia, eating disor…
Music Therapy's Relevance in a Cancer Hospital Researched Through a Constructivist Lens
The constructivist research paradigm informed a research investigation on the relevance of music therapy in a cancer hospital that is, what did the music therapy do and did it help? Over 3 months, criterion sampling was used to elicit interpretations in 5 studies from 5 sources: 128 patients who participated, 27 patients who overheard or witnessed music therapy, 41 visitors, 61 staff, and the music therapist-researcher. Fifty-seven percent of the…
Social Work and the Body
This book brings sociological and neuroscientific perspectives on the body together to inform a new understanding of person-in-environment. It offers important new ways of working with people in vario
Death and the Dynamics of Group Life
This article reports qualitative analysis of data collected during psychoanalytically orientated group sessions after the death of members. This group, based in group analytic and existentialist theoretical perspectives, is for women with advanced breast cancer. We ask: how and why does the group keep going, even as its members leave it through death? Our interest in understanding the therapeutic factors generated by the co-therapists, group memb…
Social Work from Inside and Between Complex Systems
The twenty-first century presents social work with significant challenges. To address today's complex problems, social work must inform itself of advances in the knowledge base of the natural and social sciences, particularly those that explain the changing construction of different systems and the way the world works. These explanatory theories offer relevant understanding of the social, economic and ecological contexts within which social worke…
Sound Continuing Bonds with the Deceased
This study examines music's relevance, including preloss music therapy, for 8 informal caregivers of people who died from cancer. The design was informed by constructivist grounded theory and included semistructured interviews. Bereaved caregivers were supported or occasionally challenged as their musical lives enabled a connection with the deceased. Music was often still used to improve mood and sometimes used to confront grief. Specific music, …
Using Social Work Theory and Values to Investigate the Implementation of Community Treatment Orders
This paper establishes the value of a social work investigation of good practice with people on Community Treatment Orders in the context of social work's longstanding interest in the ethical challenges of working with involuntary clients. The emancipatory values of social work were used to guide this research, thereby ensuring the participation of consumers and their families or carers. Critical social work theory provided an important theoretic…
Project Discovery
The health sector uses a “person-in-environment” perspective reflected in multidisciplinary teamwork to understand and influence human lives. This standpoint accords closely with social work's knowledge and theory base, recognising that material, economic, political, organisational, and social structures interact, creating a complex array of factors impacting on individuals and families. Practice research activities are an effective way of explor…
A Review of the Efficacy and Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy and Short-Term Psychodynamic Therapy in the Treatment of Major Depression
A systematic review of the literature regarding the efficacy and effectiveness of cognitive-behaviour therapy and short-term psychodynamic therapy in the treatment of major depression in adults was conducted. This search of electronic databases (PsycArticles, PsycINFO, Social Services Abstracts and PsycLIT) was conducted between August and October 2011 and resulted in full text review of 13 publications. On balance the evidence, largely derived f…
What factors influence older adults to discuss falls with their health‐care providers
OBJECTIVE: To identify from the older adults' perspective, the factors associated with discussion about falls with their general practitioners and other health professionals and the factors associated with initiation of these discussions. We explored the content of and barriers to discussion about falls. METHODS: A prospective cohort study where a baseline cross-sectional survey was followed by a survey 1 year later. Survey domains were drawn fro…
Why do hospitalized older adults take risks that may lead to falls
BACKGROUND: The behaviour of hospitalized older adults can contribute to falls, a common adverse event during and after hospitalization. OBJECTIVE: To understand why older adults take risks that may lead to falls in the hospital setting and in the transition period following discharge home. DESIGN: Qualitative research. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Hospital patients from inpatient medical and rehabilitation wards (n = 16), their informal caregivers …
Applying Research Evidence in Social Work Practice edited by MartinWebber. 2015
Celebrating 70 Years and Reflecting on the Challenges Ahead
Researching Practice
Themed Issue on Social Work Education – Part 1
Themed Issue on Social Work Education – Part 2
In 2017, Emeritus Professor John Lawrence published his six-volume autobiography, in which his highly significant achievements of over four decades of academic and intellectual leadership of the profession are recorded and accessible to all.Indeed
Housing and Support Narratives of People Experiencing Mental Health Issues
Background: Choice, control, privacy, and security are widely reported housing preferences of mental health consumers, are associated with improved well-being and greater housing satisfaction, and are important for recovery. This paper describes housing and neighborhood experiences from a larger qualitative study that sought to learn with people experiencing mental health issues about their everyday lives in an Australian urban community. Methods…
Australian Social Work Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Social Work End-of-Life Care Interventions for Patients and their Families in Hospital
As the majority of Australians receive end-of-life care in hospitals, there is a need to examine the quality of social work interventions for dying patients and their families. Clinical data mining of 347 deceased patient’s files revealed different approaches to end-of-life interventions across one health network. Data demonstrate that although social workers are invaluable in providing emotional and practical assistance, greater awareness and ed…
Sociology (23 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Political science (14 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (14 works) · Social Work (13 works) · Engineering (12 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Work (physics (11 works) · Engineering ethics (10 works) · Public relations (9 works)