Advancing social work practice in health care settings: a collaborative partnership for continuing education

Social Work Gerontological Practice: The Need for Faculty Development in the New Millennium

There is a pressing need to upgrade the gerontological knowledge and skills of practicing social workers. Geriatrics and gerontology, as specialized fields of knowledge, have not been sufficiently integrated into formal academic training programs. There are major trends in the health care environment which impact on social work education, including technological advances, a shift from inpatient to outpatient and community care settings, increasing diversity of the older population, and client and family participation in decisionmaking. These trends necessitate social work education to emphasize new content areas in gerontology and the development of new skills in clinical, case management, care coordination, and teamwork. A significant obstacle to the preparation of future social workers to deliver the complex services needed by older adults and their families is a serious shortage of social work faculty in gerontology. Sustained and broad initiatives, such as the John A. Hartford Foundation funded Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program, are needed to develop academic and practice-based faculty in gerontology. This is crucial if social work is to maintain an important service role in the new millennium.

Determinants of health concentration selection among University of Southern California MSW students

By 2020, health care social workers are projected to make up 25 percent of the entire number of professional social workers in the United States. At the University of Southern California, the number of graduate students selecting the health social work concentration has increased exponentially over the last five years. Although there are no published findings to indicate that other schools of social work are experiencing a similar trend, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that, nationally, the number of social workers employed in health care has increased and is projected to continue increasing over the next decade. The purpose of this study was to identify decision-making determinants of MSW students pursuing a specific vocational interest in health care settings. The study used a questionnaire to gather quantitative and qualitative data from a population of MSW students. The findings suggest that graduate students select the health concentration based on self-knowledge (abilities and interests) and vocational knowledge (job demands and labor market). This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for health social work curriculums, practice, research, policy, and the integral role social workers play in health care reform in the present and will play in the future.

Developing a multisite project in geriatric and/or gerontological education with emphases in interdisciplinary practice and cultural competence

PURPOSE

This 2-year, multisite, curriculum-development project aimed to increase the pool of professionals trained in geriatric and/or gerontological social work.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Our methods included (a) providing advanced training in aging, cultural competence, and interdisciplinary practice to social work professionals and masters degree students, (b) developing, implementing, and testing an innovative student curriculum based on standardized learning competencies identified by project participants, (c) revising the university curriculum to support such competencies, and (d) producing a practicum handbook.

RESULTS

The project achieved its out-comes.

IMPLICATIONS

Project conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation are discussed together with approaches for its replication.

Collaboration between social workers and physicians: perspectives on a shared case

As health care is being restructured, health care institutions are recognizing that interdisciplinary collaboration is an essential element of both effective patient care and organizational survival. This paper analyzes self-reported views of actual collaborative activities between 50 pairs of social workers and physicians on a specific shared case in an acute care hospital setting. Through examining the degree of congruence in perspectives of each pair of collaborators, we compare the two professions' views of the collaborative process and outcome. Additionally, each profession's outlook on its own and the other profession's roles and responsibilities in the case is examined. Our findings indicate that many social work and physician collaborators share similar perspectives about many aspects of their joint patient care endeavors. Where there was disagreement within a pair, almost always, it was a social worker selecting or discussing a variable when her physician counterpart did not. Physicians were less likely than their social work counterparts to identify patient/family problems related to adjustment to illness and problems connected to hospital and community resources as well. Social workers were much less satisfied with the collaboration, saw many more things that they or their collaborator could have done differently and even perceived more disagreement about the approach to the case than did their physician collaborators. It is important to understand, empirically, the dynamics of successful collaboration and to assist social workers in becoming influential and effective collaborators with other health professionals.

Hospital restructuring: positioning social work to manage change

In the shifts to programmatic hospital organizations, social workers are having to learn to reframe their work, reorganize their thinking, and restructure their professional disciplines in order to survive. The experience is frequently one of frustration, anger, and impotence. Yet, social workers are masters of systems thinking in hospitals, and are well positioned to effect change. The beauty of shifting to a flattened hierarchy that is patient focused, is that it endorses change consistent with the social work mission in health. The challenge for social work is to grapple with the big issues: our belief in ourselves; defining our roles and functions and priorities; defining our vision in programmatic hospital organizations; being critical of what we do; and articulating what we have to offer. This paper identifies ways social workers can position themselves to effect positive change in hospitals undergoing restructuring.