Thank a Clinical Social Worker Today

By Vickie LeffMarch is Social Work Month – a great excuse to take a moment and celebrate the work that clinical social workers do in palliative care. But, hang on, perhaps we should be doing more than that. Can we adjust our lens settings and challenge ourselves to see clinical social work differently?Palliative Care is a team sport; the standard model of practice includes an MD, NP and CSW. My challenge to all of you would be to make sure you are all equal partners in our unequal medical world. CSW’s can’t bill for in-patient visits, we can’t generate RVU’s for the hospital system, and it’s often hard to quantify data-driven results proving the impact of CSW interventions. I don’t know about you, but I work in a pretty physician-centric organization where there is a distinct pecking order. In fact, my hospital recently dissolved the CSW department in lieu of a Case Management Department. Medical social workers have been dealing with this for a long time (1920-30’s).Much of the work done by your CSW is unseen, done in private with a patient or family member – needing to have conversations away from other providers due to the nature of the content and emotions. The work you may see us doing might look like “general support” but I can tell you it is quite deliberate and well thought out, founded in evidence based theories.We choose our words very carefully. In fact, CSW has been having the “conversation” with patients and families for decades about goa...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: clinical CSW palliative social work social worker Vickie Leff Source Type: blogs