Melissa Beukelman is Following Her Dream of Helping Others as a Social Worker at Children’s

Early in life, Melissa Beukelman developed an interest in emotions and the inner workings of behaviors, making a career in social work her ideal path. Melissa has been part of the Children’s Social Work team for seven years, and is currently a Medical Social Worker in the Intensive Care Unit. She loves the idea that social workers advocate on behalf of their patients, and at Children’s she gets to do just that.

Melissa’s Passion for Her Patients and Social Work

“As a social worker, we are advocates for the patients. When a child gets diagnosed with an acute illness the family can go into shock. Because of this, a framework needs to be established to help them get through it. Crisis management is a large part of my role at Children’s and I am there to provide support for families. In my role, I become their resource and connect them with outside partners to help them through the transition stages of their child’s diagnosis.”

Making a Difference in Social Work

“I change people’s lives every day and so can you. As a social worker, I meet with people every day right after a trauma, dig in and help them really discover what’s important to them to keep moving forward.”

An Average Day as a Children’s Social Worker in the ICU

“Each day I spend about a half an hour to an hour with each of my patients and their families. On average, I work with 13 patients at any given time for an average of three days in the ICU. My role parallels with counseling and assisting families through difficult times. I work to identify family dynamics, share resources they help overcome barriers that might impede recovery. At Children’s, we work beyond traditional psychosocial assessments.

Growing with Social Work

“As a social worker at Children’s, every case has the potential to help you grow and learn. Every patient has unique needs and they all come from different backgrounds and cultures. In general, families coming from the same region will have different family backgrounds. There is always baseline learning in social work, but the bottom line is that I have learned within this pace of work at Children’s that each case is different. It is very rewarding.”

Are you ready to jump into your own cases at Children’s of Alabama on the Social Work team?