Latest posts
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Kayla Bonkowski | What the MSW Degree Actually Teaches You
The Master of Social Work is not a longer version of a bachelor’s degree in psychology or sociology. It is a distinct professional credential that trains practitioners to assess, intervene, and advocate within complex human systems. Kayla Bonkowski, completing her MSW at Louisiana State University while living in Sterling Heights, Michigan, has been direct about…
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Kayla Bonkowski | Why Family Dynamics Matter More Than Diagnosis in Palliative Care
The diagnosis tells the medical team what to treat. The family dynamics determine everything else. Kayla Bonkowski, a social work graduate student in Sterling Heights, Michigan, makes this observation from her clinical training and calls it one of the most practically useful frameworks she has encountered in the palliative care context. A terminal diagnosis is,…
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Kayla Bonkowski | What Burnout Looks Like in Healthcare Social Workers
Burnout in healthcare social work does not always look like collapse. It can look like a social worker who is technically performing every required function but is no longer actually present with the people they serve. It can look like a practitioner who processes grief efficiently — the family is referred, the paperwork is filed,…
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Kayla Bonkowski | The Case for Bringing Social Work Into Palliative Care Earlier
Most families meet the palliative care social worker late. By the time the introduction happens, the family is often already in crisis — the diagnosis has been sitting for weeks or months, decisions have been made without adequate support, and the relational damage from navigating those decisions without a skilled guide has already accumulated. Kayla…
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Kayla Bonkowski | What End-of-Life Planning Actually Looks Like
End-of-life planning is not a single conversation about final wishes. It is an ongoing process involving legal instruments, financial decisions, family communication, and medical guidance that most people approach too late, in too much distress, with too little information. Kayla Bonkowski, a social work graduate student in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is training for a specialty…
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Kayla Bonkowski | Why Anticipatory Grief Deserves Its Own Name
Grief has a clinical definition. It is the response to loss. What the standard definition misses is that loss begins before the death does. Kayla Bonkowski, a social work graduate student in Sterling Heights, Michigan, works within a specialty — hospice and palliative care — where the grief a family carries before a death is…
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Kayla Bonkowski | The Difference Between a Therapist and a Social Worker
Both professions involve extended conversations with people who are struggling. The training, scope, and underlying framework are different enough that treating the terms as interchangeable leads to real confusion about what each can offer. Kayla Bonkowski, a social work graduate student in Sterling Heights, Michigan, thinks the distinction deserves a plain explanation. A therapist —…
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Kayla Bonkowski | What Social Workers Actually Do in Medical Settings
Medical social workers operate in hospital rooms, discharge planning meetings, and family conferences. Most patients meet one at a moment of crisis, which is not the ideal introduction to what the role covers. Kayla Bonkowski, a social work graduate student in Sterling Heights, Michigan, has spent time inside these systems through her academic training and…
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Kayla Bonkowski | What Happens to a Family When Someone Is Dying
Terminal illness does not only affect the patient. It reorganizes the entire family system — and the social worker steps into that reorganization. Terminal illness does not arrive cleanly. It arrives into a household that already has its own structure, its own history, and its own long-standing patterns for how the people inside it relate…
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Kayla Bonkowski | When Fitness Becomes a Mental Health Practice
The research on exercise and mental health is more specific than the general claim suggests. The specifics make it more useful. The claim that exercise is good for mental health is repeated often enough to have become background noise. It is also true, and the research behind it is more specific and more useful than…