A Day in the Life of a BJU Patient Services Social Worker

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It takes a special kind of person to make a career out of helping people. One such person, Beijing United Family Hospital (BJU) Inpatient Patient Experience Manager Clair Figueroa, explains the journey that helped her become a helping hand to hospitalized patients in Beijing.

 

I think that a Social Work degree is great preparation for life as an expat. Firstly, as a social worker, we are taught empathy (trying to understand another person’s life and feelings without judgment). We are also taught the value of understanding the patient’s issues as a whole and in their environment. This means looking at their race, background, and economic resources. We are encouraged to have openness for different cultures and values. Social workers are asked to gain a deeper understanding of what is really going on from the patient’s perspective. For example, how do their family, job, and environment affect their life? At BJU, I have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world, hear their stories, listen to their dreams, and sympathize with their disappointments. It is incredibly difficult to uproot your life and move to a country that is very different from your own. Many people just cannot do it. I have realized that people who travel or move to other countries have a spirit and a mindset unlike others. They can be more adventurous, courageous, fun-loving, and open to new situations. They can love their home country and family deeply – but from a distance. They keep their cultural traditions while they learn about local culture and create new traditions with their friends instead of families. In this way, expats are unique and like social workers in many aspects. 

 

Many patients I visit during my inpatient roundings are tourists, many of them older than 65 years, some of them older than 80 years. One time, we had two couples on the unit both celebrating their 50-year anniversaries, one couple from the United States and the other from France. It is amazing to meet such intrepid and exciting people living their lives to the fullest. An Indian woman from Canada came to Beijing after her husband lost a long battle with cancer. For their entire life, they had never spent one night away from each other. Their favorite thing to do was make dinner together; he always kept her company and did the dishes! He made her promise to continue having fun and to keep living her life. She came to Beijing with her friend and, when she injured herself, her friend had to return to Canada. I did not feel sorry for her because she had the opportunity to be with a man she was completely in love with and their life had been amazing together. She would always have those memories and she had a chance share those memories with me while she recovered.During my three years as a social worker at BJU, I have seen true miracles and have also seen great tragedy. There was one young man in a coma in the ICU. As the social worker, I needed to explain to the parents that he might not regain consciousness. This was the parents’ only child and he was still a young man. The mother could barely stand from the shock but she was grateful to have someone there to comfort her. It took some time but she was able to calm down and she was better after that, more able to concentrate and just be with her son to support him. She prayed and continued speaking to her son and encouraging him to wake up. Two weeks later the patient started to make small movements and could answer questions by blinking his eyes. It was a wonderful feeling and a great relief to his medical team at BJU. It was a joyous feeling of saving a life that we all had a part in. There are other times when there is no hope and all you can do is watch the patient’s family suffer through this immense shock and grief and try to support them in any small way that you can. In those times I am grateful for my own small family. It makes me appreciate with all my heart the things that I have and the love that surrounds me. It gives me hope and the ability to continue with my work in a positive way.

 

I feel that I have learned the most from the families of patients who are critically ill. I learned that the fight for survival can be a vibrant force and the family’s outlook, even in the direst circumstances, can be amazingly positive. When I asked one patient’s wife how she dealt so well with her husband’s illness, having two children under 5, she said, “I just take it 10 minutes at a time, then I go through the next 10 minutes and it keeps me going.” Her husband recovered fully, I am happy to say! One couple had to fly from Tibet to Beijing because the wife’s pacemaker was having problems. They told me their story of taking a taxi through a road blocked by goats, then taking a small plane to the major airport with her having difficulty breathing throughout the trip. They both were smiling while telling me their story. I wondered how they could bounce back so quickly from such a horrifying ordeal. They seemed to be taking life for what it is, unpredictable, like water falling through your hands, slippery and moving way too fast. For many of the visitors to Beijing, as well as expats living here, life is full of wonder and adventure. I think they understand that if you don’t get on the ride you will miss something extraordinary. 

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