Friday, May 9th, 2025
9:30am - 10:45am
Room 608
Concurrent Session:
SRV Informed Clinical Advocacy: The Medical Safeguards Project
SRV Informed Clinical Advocacy: The Medical Safeguards Project
The Medical Safeguards Project of Shriver Clinical Services Corporation has been operational in Southeastern Massachusetts for thirty years. It has SRV as its theoretical base, acknowledging that one of the important Good Things of Life is health and good health care. The project was developed with the appreciation of heightened vulnerability of devalued patients, drawn from the conservatism corollary. The Medical Safeguards Project is composed of physicians, doctorate level nurses, nurse practitioners and advocates who accompany devalued patients in the hospital and in other medical settings to safeguard their health and lives. It has an educational component which highlights the importance of promoting valued social roles to ensure excellent standards of care. The presentation will describe the project and its work, show how an SRV approach dovetails nicely with the patient-centered focus promoted widely in contemporary medical practice, and describe some positive outcomes realized and the considerable challenges it faces.
Presenters
Jo Massarelli​
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Jo Massarelli is the Director of the SRV Implementation Project in Massachusetts (USA) teaching Social Role Valorization and related topics both in the US and abroad, working to effect positive change for elders, people with impairments, and the poor. She has a particular interest in advocacy in hospitals and teaches workshops on defending vulnerable people in hospitals and on medical decision-making. Jo has been a close associate of the late Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger and his Training Institute in Syracuse, New York since 1983. She and her husband Marc Tumeinski are members of a community responding to the needs of homeless people in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts, by providing hospitality in their homes.​
Allison Souza
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Allison Souza has been in the field of nursing for over 15 years. She currently works as a family nurse practioner for Shriver Clinical Services Corporation. She collaborates with the Department of Developmental Services as a health and hospital safeguard to ensure that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities receive comprehensive medical services and support. Dr. Souza is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and certified developmental disabilities nurse.