When is it social work? Another look at practice with groups in health care

It has been observed that there are problems in the conceptual base of social workers' practice with groups in health settings. This article suggests that to develop a sound conceptual base and to improve the integration of work with groups into the operating structures for delivering social work services in health care, it is necessary to distinguish social work groups from other groups. Criteria for social work practice with groups are identified. Criteria are based on fundamental principles of social work practice in health care and principles of social work practice differentiated to take account of group processes.     

Ethical preferences for the clinical practice of empowerment social work

Social workers in health care and mental health benefit from interventions that integrate principles of contextual social work practice with standards for clinical practice. The authors articulate a conceptual framework for the ethical practice of social work that complements the social justice purpose. The sixteen ethical preferences in this framework are the ethics of care, autonomy, power, change, respect, critical thinking, praxis, discourse, critique, justice, contextual practice, inclusion, anti-oppression, advocacy, collaboration, and politicized practice.     

Examining professional competencies for emerging and novice social workers in health care

This participatory project identified competencies of social workers in health care, with a focus on entry to the field. Findings reflected discussion groups with n = 24 social workers in health care settings. Identified core competencies were: (a) a core base of knowledge specific to social work in health care, (b) understanding of the health care system and implications for practice, (c) a strong work ethic and confidence working with limited supervision, (d) interpersonal skills for multi-disciplinary teamwork, (e) understanding about complex role and power dynamics, (f) accountability for one’s own work/practice and commitment to professional development, (g) reflectiveness on practice, and (h) an organizational commitment to capacity building.     

A Critical Interdisciplinary Analysis of Culturally Appropriate Research Approach and Practices in Health Care and Social Work

This paper presents a critique of research approaches used in health and social care research with vulnerable and socially disadvantaged groups, and children and young people from minority ethnic backgrounds in Britain. The paper aims to critically examine research processes in health and social care from a psychological perspective and a social work perspective. This paper argues that a conceptual framework that incorporates a cross-cultural perspective for understanding the development of minority ethnic children is critical in order to address omissions in existing theoretical formulations and research in social work and health care theory and research. In the United Kingdom there is a lack of social work research from a cross-cultural perspective. Research knowledge and information from a cross-cultural perspective on minority ethnic family life, minority ethnic children and young people are vital to the health care and social work profession.     

Research on organizational issues in health care social work

A rich body of knowledge spans organizational topics relevant to the practice, conceptual development and planning of social work health care services. At a time when health care organizations are experiencing major changes in their structure and financing; organizational research informs both the system adjustments and leadership which social work can offer the health care field. Organizational research on health care social work is grouped into three categories: management and administrative issues; interprofessional and interorganizational relations; and service delivery topics. Within each category, the major issues are presented with single site and multi-site research reviewed. Recommendations to improve the contributions of this body of research include greater attention to methodological rigor in designing and implementing research projects.     

Health care social work treatment of patient and family emotion: a synthesis and comparison across patient populations and practice settings

Health care practitioners and researchers alike are beginning to acknowledge the importance of emotion in health. Nevertheless, health care social workers continue to assume most of the responsibility for actually dealing with the emotions of patients and families. Literature exploring social work interventions with emotion are restricted to a single patient population and practice setting. This study conducted a content analysis of pertinent literature, systematically codifying strategies across patient populations and practice settings according to a pragmatic conceptual foundation of the professional emotion treatment process. Analysis yielded a comprehensive conceptually clustered matrix of 45 strategies, establishing an objective and systematic basis for identifying and understanding this professional emotion treatment process for social work educators, practitioners, and researchers alike.     

Health Care Social Work Treatment of Patient and Family Emotion

ABSTRACT

Health care practitioners and researchers alike are beginning to acknowledge the importance of emotion in health. Nevertheless, health care social workers continue to assume most of the responsibility for actually dealing with the emotions of patients and families. Literature exploring social work interventions with emotion are restricted to a single patient population and practice setting. This study conducted a content analysis of pertinent literature, systematically codifying strategies across patient populations and practice settings according to a pragmatic conceptual foundation of the professional emotion treatment process. Analysis yielded a comprehensive conceptually clustered matrix of 45 strategies, establishing an objective and systematic basis for identifying and understanding this professional emotion treatment process for social work educators, practitioners, and researchers alike.     

Social Work Practice and Community Health

This paper describes the functions and roles performed by the author as a social worker in the Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York. The material is presented within the context of current controversies in the health care field and the department's assumption of responsibility to help improve the health care delivery system. Examples are provided to illustrate ways in which social work practice can enhance the ability of an agency of institution to use its own resources to educate and encourage a community and attendant health delivery systems therein to identify needs and to work in partnership in order to solve some of the problems. Discussion of the philosophical and knowledge base from which specific principles and techniques emerge highlights the applicability of tis material to urban, nonurban, and rural areas.     

Academic careers in general practice and primary care

In the past 10 years, significant developments in general practice teaching and research have led to the considerable growth of academic general practice as a discipline. This paper reviews issues relating to these developments, particularly career pathways and training aspects. The need to extend these advances to the broadening arena of primary health care has given further impetus for the development of academic careers. General practice will need to work closely with secondary care, community health, and social services to develop primary health care in its broadest sense, and an evidence base, generated by relevant research and evaluation, must underpin all of this. Structural and funding changes to undergraduate education, postgraduate training and primary care research have created a range of opportunities for general practice clinicians to define career pathways, not formerly available, within multiprofessional and multidisciplinary departments and groups. Education for future general practice and primary care must underpin developments as much as a research base. Relevant masters' degrees and diplomas are now widely available, and extended vocational training and higher professional education will enable general practitioners in their formative years to consider academic opportunities.     

SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION FOR HEALTH CARE PRACTICE

The probably future developments in social work education for health care practice are viewed from a systems perspective. The developing needs of social work in health care are examined within the context of the developing needs of the broader field of social work practice, since changes in this larger system cannot but impact upon the health care social work subsystem. Similarly, education for health care social work practice is seen within the perspective of the broader system of social work education for practice in general, because developments in this larger system determine the directions that will be taken by the smaller system of educational training. The interfacing of the two systems, social work practice and social work education, is examined.     

Health benefits of primary care social work for adults with complex health and social needs: a systematic review

The prevalence of complex health and social needs in primary care patients is growing. Furthermore, recent research suggests that the impact of psychosocial distress on the significantly poorer health outcomes in this population may have been underestimated. The potential of social work in primary care settings has been extensively discussed in both health and social work literature and there is evidence that social work interventions in other settings are particularly effective in addressing psychosocial needs. However, the evidence base for specific improved health outcomes related to primary care social work is minimal. This review aimed to identify and synthesise the available evidence on the health benefits of social work interventions in primary care settings. Nine electronic databases were searched from 1990 to 2015 and seven primary research studies were retrieved. Due to the heterogeneity of studies, a narrative synthesis was conducted. Although there is no definitive evidence for effectiveness, results suggest a promising role for primary care social work interventions in improving health outcomes. These include subjective health measures and self‐management of long‐term conditions, reducing psychosocial morbidity and barriers to treatment and health maintenance. Although few rigorous study designs were found, the contextual detail and clinical settings of studies provide evidence of the practice applicability of social work intervention. Emerging policy on the integration of health and social care may provide an opportunity to develop this model of care.     

The legal clinic: helping social workers master the legal environment in health care.

The social environment for all is becoming increasingly legalized. This fact is evidenced in the extensive entitlement regulations and ethical decision-making processes surrounding health care consumers and professional providers. The authors of this paper describe a program designed to educate social workers in an acute care hospital to the legal issues and considerations that influence decision-making and interventions in social work practice. The purpose of the paper is two-fold: to highlight the program planning process in establishing and institutionalizing a Legal Clinic for social work, and secondly to stress the significance of legal content in the knowledge base of social workers in health care settings.     

Observations on the Scientific Base of Health Social Work

This article examines aspects of social work in health care from a philosophy of science perspective, which suggests different ways of conceptualizing and defining variables ranging from service recipients to principles undergirding social work intervention. Focus is given to the relationships among theory, practice, and research in social work by considering the nature of clinical theory; health social work theory; and theory grounded research.     

Observations on the scientific base of health social work

This article examines aspects of social work in health care from a philosophy of science perspective, which suggests different ways of conceptualizing and defining variables ranging from service recipients to principles undergirding social work intervention. Focus is given to the relationships among theory, practice, and research in social work by considering the nature of clinical theory; health social work theory; and theory grounded research.     

Preparation of social workers for a changing health care environment

Rapid changes in health care have provided the impetus for social workers to reexamine their professional preparation for effective practice in health care settings today. Faculty teaching students and field instructors were asked to indicate on a questionnaire where specific subject matter is taught to social work students: in the classroom, in the field, or in both settings. Results of the study show a communication gap between school and field and a need for teaching models that enable educators to convey more of the profession's expanding knowledge base and to prepare students to deal with concurrent demands for expertise and expediency in practice. Programmatic changes to address these issues are suggested.     

Social work practice with people with disabilities in the era of disability rights.

Social workers, especially those in health care and rehabilitation systems, must consider practice changes necessitated by recent legislation and the growing activism of disability rights groups. The authors review essential elements of the emerging sense of both oppression and empowerment that is occurring for many people with disabilities and groups; consider key aspects of ADA and other perti nent legislation that place new emphases on the self-determination of people with disabilities; and discuss what implications changing practice roles might have for social workers' relationships and patterns of interaction with other professionals in medical, health care and rehabilitation settings. The authors outline a beginning effort at designing a conceptual framework that promotes practice that: (1) maximizes clients' involvement in exploring an expanded range of options and choices; (2) prepares clients to be more effective in dealings with professionals, bureaucrats and agencies that often do not understand nor appreciate their need for self-determination; and (3) at the organizing level, mobilizes and helps to empower groups of people with disabilities to consider policy and program alternatives that can improve their situation. This framework may also be useful in work with people who have other long term care needs, chronic conditions.     

Dilemmas of talking about lifestyle changes among couples coping with a cardiac event

This paper makes the case for bringing empirical analysis to the heart of conceptual work about health care practice. Drawing on ethnographic observations in intensive care units in the UK, it identifies and analyses a mismatch between the practice of a particular health care specialty and its associated professional and academic discourse. As a result, two claims in academic nursing discourse are criticised: first, that nursing practice is (or should be) focused on individual patient care; and second, that nursing is (or should be) radically distinct from medicine. By raising the analytical profile of situated practice, health care workers (in particular, but not exclusively, nurses) are shown to undertake important caring work with patients' relatives. Their work includes caring not only for an individual patient's social self, but also for patients'social contexts. The paper also argues that theoretical emphases on nursing's unique perspective and on differences between medicine and nursing are exaggerated in clinical practice, for example there are many similarities between what nurses and doctors actually do. Reasons for the persistence of these claims in academic nursing discourse are put forward-nursing seems to be quite unusual in needing an explicit theory of practice, and the paper speculates on why this is the case. The general lesson of the paper is that analytical evidence about the context and content of practice needs to be afforded a more fundamental role in the development of theories about practice-based disciplines.     

Die normativen Grundlagen Sozialer Arbeit – (auch) ein Beitrag zur Public-Health-Ethik

Social work and public health are different but mutually connected. Both are professions with their own ethical foundations. Despite all differences, they have the same goal: to protect and to enhance the well-being of people. This is, in part, why the fundamental ethical principles of social work are salient for developing public health ethics. As a human rights profession, social work respects the personal autonomy of clients, supports solidarity-based relationships in families, groups or communities, and attempts to uphold social justice in society. Social workers need to adopt special professional attitudes: sensibility for the vulnerabilities of clients, care and attentiveness for their resources and strengths, assistance instead of paternalistic care and advocacy in decision making for clients’ well-being when clients are not able to decide for themselves. These fundamental ethical principles are the basis for discussion of special topics of social work ethics as public health ethics, for example, in justifying intervention in individual lifestyles by public services without the participation or consent of the affected persons.     

The Use of Theoretical Constructs and Research Data to Establish a Base for Clinical Social Work in Health Settings

This article suggests a means for organizing a base for clinical social work practice in health settings. Membership, as a theoretical construct, is used to explore the essentials of social work, to explicate its key practice concepts, and to review characteristics of the health field. Selected findings from a secondary analysis of data from the New England Regional Survey of Social Work Practice are considered with reference to theory and essential concepts of health social work practice. Questions are raised and implications drawn for the practice of clinical social work in health settings and for education for that practice.     

The future of health social work

The practice of social work in health care is at a critical juncture, and laces an uncertain future. The authors provide an overview of the challenges facing social work practice within the health care setting, as well as recommendations for enhancing social work practice and education. Challenges discussed include economic factors, demographic changes, and technological advances influencing the practice of social work in health care. The need for a proactive stance among social work professionals and educators is promoted. The proposed changes are intended to stimulate discussion and an exchange of ideas needed to maintain Social Work's relevance and integrity in the evolving health care delivery system.