Special Issue Spotlight – Navigating Uncertainty in Clinical Social Work Practice: A Pilot Simulation-Based Study
Our Lab Director Kenta Asakura and Lab Affiliate Marion Bogo recently published a special issue in the . This special issue is the first of its kind to canvas contemporary scholarly works on simulation in advancing our professional commitment to clinical social work education and practice.
This week, we spotlight the article , featuring our Lab Director Kenta Asakura, Co-Director Sarah Todd, Lab Manager Katherine Occhiuto, and Lab Affiliate Pamela Grassau. In this paper, the authors employ simulation-based methodologies and live standardized clients to explore clinical social workers’ encounters with uncertainty and the strategies they use to navigate it. The authors found two themes emerge from the data: (1) there is a variation between less experienced participants who navigated uncertainty in pragmatic, task focused ways and more experienced practitioners who focused on the wider relationship with the client; and (2) less experienced practitioners tended towards struggling against uncertainty while more experienced practitioners demonstrated an ability to sit and wade within it. These findings speak to the need to better understand specific aspects of uncertainty in clinical practice.
Read more about the special issue of the Clinical Social Work Journal .