Task Achievement Scale for an Anxiety Patient
The client is an eight-year-old boy, EV from Guatemala who suffers from anxiety disorder because he witnessed domestic violence at his home. Due to his experience, it is difficult for him to trust people and open-up to express his feelings. As a result, he often gets frustrated. Moreover, he is not conversant with English; however, he can comprehend little English.
The sole aim of this intervention is to design a task achievement scale to evaluate the client’s degree of recovery from anxiety and its effects. The goals that were agreed upon were:
To construct a weekly intervention scheme for the gradual improvement from anxiety.
To train the client how to express his feelings in order to be understood by other people and reduce feelings of frustration.
To create a rapport with the client to establish trust. To attain the specified goals, the client and the practitioner agreed on performing some tasks which would be divided between them. They include the following:
Task 1: Demonstrate empathy by listening to the patient. The work is undertaken by the health provider to help reduce the client’s anxiety by asking him how is feeling at the onset of every session (Hepworth, Rooney, Dewberry & Strom-Gottfried, 2017).
Task 2: Help to reduce the patient’s anxiety by introducing oneself and the role of the healthcare giver. The task is carried out by the counselor who will ask EV questions regarding his personal life and experience at home, which may contribute to keeping him calm. By getting to know the patient on a personal level, the caregiver will demonstrate that he is interested in the client as an individual and not only as a patient.
Task 3: Learn the other individual’s emotion. The caregiver implements the task by acquiring new information about the boy that may not have been recorded in his history file. The caregiver will give the client opportunities to ask any questions regarding the treatment plan whereby the former will answer in a calmly and reassuringly to eradicate any negative emotional aspects and create a comfortable atmosphere for EV to open up about his feelings (Hepworth et al., 2017). Both the client and his caregiver play significant roles in undertaking the tasks because they learn from each other.
Task 4: Relate with EV by learning his language. The healthcare provider carries out this task in order to confidently speak the basics with the boy thus building trust between them.
Task 5: Learn how to express feelings to eliminate frustration. The client plays a significant role in this task by sharing with his counselor and family members about his feelings to reduce fear and confusion brought by anxiety.
Task 6: Clarify the difficulties that will be experienced in the change implementation process. The caregiver performs this task to prepare his client for the inevitable mixed feelings experienced, which should be taken as natural obstacles to overcome instead of yielding defeat (Hepworth et al., 2017).
Task Achievement Scaling
Effort Rubric
Achievement Rubric
4
The task was implemented for completion. Both the client and his counselor pushed themselves to continue working on the job despite facing challenges or not getting an immediate solution. The patient viewed obstacles as opportunities to strengthen his understanding.
Both the caregiver and his patient exceeded the goals of the task.
3
Both the patient and caregiver completed the task. They both pushed themselves to continue implementing the task despite obstacles or the non-occurrence of an immediate solution.
Both parties met the goals of the task.
2
Both the patient and the healthcare provider put some effort into the work. However, either of them gave up when challenges arose.
Some of the task goals were achieved but others were not met.
1
Both the client and the healthcare giver put minimal effort into the task.
The goals of the task were not met.
(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2015)
The rating of each task was as follows: task 1: rating 4; 100%; task 2: rating 4; 100%; task 3: rating 2; 50%; task 4: rating 3; 85%; task 5: rating 2; 50% and task 6: rating 4; 100%.
Summary of Results
In the early sessions with EV, the healthcare provider demonstrated empathetic responding to create a rapport with the client. Inaccuracies in the caregiver’s perception were dealt with by using lead-in phrases like “Did I hear you correctly?” and “Let me see if my understanding is right…” to correct any misinterpretations in the client’s feedback. The caregiver created a safe atmosphere for EV to reveal his thoughts and feelings. Since the boy does not speak English, empathy is crucial to enhance the efficiency of trans-cultural relationships hence the caregiver was sensitive to the cultural aspects of his client (Hepworth et al., 2017).
Since the client is a small boy, he communicated mostly through non-verbal cues to express his discomfort in expressing his thoughts to an unfamiliar adult. Therefore the counselor inquired from the client what his non-verbal expressions meant and understood when EV made one-word replies on how things are at home. An analytical technique was the play therapy that allowed the child to tell a story through actions of what was happening at home (Hepworth et al., 2017).
The practitioner understood his client’s feelings of anger and frustration at the slow measure of progress toward the goals. Empathizing with such feelings of anger was vital for productive collaboration to identify how to enhance the intervention toward the client’s goal.
The caregiver taught his client how to respond empathically through the modeling technique to facilitate the patient’s change and development (Hepworth et al., 2017). Moreover, he applied the educational role to teach his client how to communicate his feelings during adverse situations.
References
Hepworth, D.H., Rooney, R.H., Dewberry, R.G. & Strom-Gottfried, K. (2017).
Empowerment Series: Direct social work practice: Theory and Skills (10th ed.). Chapter 13. Planning and implementing: Change oriented strategies, 364-422. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole/CENGAGE Learning.
Kirst-Ashman, K. & Hull, G. (2015). Understanding Generalist Practice (7th ed.). Chapter 8:
Task-achievement scaling, 303-305. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole/CENGAGE
Learning.