Find continuing education courses.

Free State Social Work

This course examines the topic of implicit bias in healthcare and the role of the healthcare provider in addressing implicit bias and prioritizing equitable care. The course explores the science of implicit bias, the social groups most affected by implicit bias, and the impact on health outcomes. Mitigation strategies are identified and include self-reflection, simulation-based education, counter-stereotypic strategies, emotional regulation, and mindfulness meditation.

Free State Social Work

This course explores evidence and practice issues related to grief, bereavement, and coping with loss. The course compares different types of grief reactions and includes models of normal grief, patterns of complicated grief, and risk factors for complicated grief. Using the DSM-5, the course differentiates a normal grieving process from a major depressive episode. Treatment considerations are discussed. In addition, the course looks at the grief experiences of medical providers as well as grief in children.

Free State Social Work

This updated course explores communication in cancer care and highlights the importance of effective, high-quality, bidirectional communication for patients and families. The course examines the challenges involved in cancer-related communication and acknowledges that better models and strategies are needed. Research findings, communication models, and demographic and cultural considerations are discussed.

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

This course explores the topic of suicidal behavior in older military veterans. The course offers a literature review and identifies the unique experiences and challenges that older veterans face, which may include psychiatric disorders, medical illnesses, and psychosocial stressors. Suicide prevention efforts are identified and include medical and psychological treatment, safety planning, social help, family education, public education, lethal means restriction, and technology.

Free State Social Work

This course explores potential implicit bias in healthcare by looking at stigmatizing language in the healthcare record. The course highlights a study using machine learning to analyze electronic health records using 15 different patient descriptors and discusses results and recommendations.

Free State Social Work

This course explores the advance care planning experiences of sexual and gender minority people and highlights the results of a qualitative research study. Three main themes are discussed: fear of discrimination limits disclosure of SOGI and affects selection of clinicians; concerns about whether EOL preferences and appointed MDMs would be supported; and most discussions about EOL preferences occurred without clinicians.

Free State Social Work

This course explores experiences of institutional racism, structural uncertainties, and racial microaggressions among people who are Black. The course examines the concept of minority stress and demonstrates that people who are Black disproportionately experience both macro- and micro-level racial stressors which contribute to minority stress.

Free State Social Work

This course describes differences in alcohol and substance use among East Asian American youth subgroups including Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese Americans. The course explores various factors that may influence substance use for EAA subgroups (stigma, acculturation, peers, norms) and challenges the Model Minority Myth. Culturally appropriate prevention and treatment preferences are discussed.

Free State Social Work

This course offers clinical guidance and discussion for mental health clinicians who work and collaborate with African American men. The course highlights the importance of Afrocentric values, including mutuality, emotional connection, and spirituality. Challenges of marginalization, oppression, and racism are explored along with other barriers to care. The course offers three frameworks for practice: social determinants of health, intersectionality, and narrative practice.

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

This course explores advocacy for Black women survivors of intimate partner violence and offers strategies that are survivor-centered, culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and strengths-based. Using an intersectional approach, the course highlights the multiple forms of oppression experienced by Black survivors and details the overrepresentation of Black women among survivors of reproductive coercion, non-fatal strangulation, and intimate partner homicide.

Free State Social Work

Examines the impact of familism on victimization in Mexican families, using qualitative research including 50 interviews of people convicted of crimes in Mexico. Identifies four main processes: preventing victims from disclosing family violence, preventing families from denouncing violence, victims remaining with families despite abuse, and victims being forced to remain in abusive relationships.

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

This course explores the ethical challenges experienced by social workers during the Covid-19 pandemic and offers a framework for understanding ethics during a time of crisis. Four broad responses to ethical challenges were identified and include ethical confusion, ethical distress, ethical creativity, and ethical learning.

Free State Social Work

This course offers an ethical analysis of the mitigation measures, restrictions, and social isolation of long term care residents during the Covid-19 pandemic. The course explores concepts of harm, proportionality, reciprocity, and transparency. Ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, maleficence, and justice are examined.

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

This course highlights the political action and leadership of early African American social workers and their work challenging discrimination and injustice while advocating for systemic change. It uses Lane and Pritzker's five domains of political social work practice as a framework and includes the NASW 2021 Blueprint of Federal and Social Policy Priorities.

Free State Social Work

This course explores key stages of the evolution of social work ethics from the morality period to the digital period. Practical tools for managing ethics challenges in social work organizations are provided; strategies include informal ethics conversations, formal ethics consultations, agency-based ethics committees, and ethics rounds.

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

Free State Social Work

This course explores the systemic problems that contribute to stress, trauma, and burnout in the social work profession, while examining the recent addition of self-care as an ethical mandate to the revised 2021 NASW Code of Ethics. The course highlights mezzo and macro factors affecting the profession that include workforce and employment conditions such as stressful working conditions, low pay, inadequate support, heavy workloads, and poor staffing. Instead of viewing self-care as a personal responsibility of social workers, the course reframes self-care as a social justice issue.

Free State Social Work

This course uses communication theory to explore the benefits and challenges of communication technology on the social worker-client relationship. The course examines the importance of resolving ethical issues related to ICT use, digital literacy, and social work practice. The following ethical issues are highlighted: boundaries, client well-being, professional competence, privacy, confidentiality, cultural competence, and social justice.