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Interview With Medical Social Work

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Medical Social Work is an important part of all of our health systems. Medical social work is a type of social work that is usually located around settings such as hospitals, outpatient clinic, hospices, long-term care facilities and also community health agencies (Morrow, 2012). Medical social work can require you to work in broad setting but also with specific populations. Most of medical social workers need to have a Master’s degree in order to qualify for that job. I interviewed a medical social worker Shavon Slack from Washington who has a degree in Social Work and is currently working at a Lise Carecenter in Kennewick. Her phone numbers are (509)586-9185 (work) and (509) 440-0435 (cell) if you need to reach her. Shavon’s main roles and …show more content…

Some of the roles they can take in hospitals are counseling, care planning, financial assistance, advocacy and assessment (Marayamuttom, 2013). According to a psychiatric social worker Marayamuttom (2013), medical social workers advise and counsel patients and their families, also explaining to them the nature of their illness. Medical social workers also serve as grief counselors to help their patients deal with the trauma of going through an acute or chronic illness (Marayamuttom, 2013). By getting help like this patients then know how deal effectively with the treatment. Also according to National Association of Social Workers (2011) some of job functions that are required of social workers also include things such as facilitating decision making, educating hospital staff on psychosocial issues of patients and also encouraging collaboration and communication between health care team members. All medical workers should hold values close and be respectful to each other. The career in medical social work can also be useful when patients need help in finding and arranging services such as counseling, or nursing home care. Marayamuttom (2013) focuses on two important responsibilities of social workers that are assessment and advocacy. The patient get assessed by the worker for severe mental illnesses, drug addiction or to see if he was ever a victim of abuse. If the worker finds evidence of such things the hospital staff tries to work together to find the best approach possible to help their patients (Marayamuttom, 2013). All these roles are important equally and if you don’t follow the structure then the support won’t go smoothly for the patients that they treat. You have to be organized in your roles as a competent medical social worker or you won’t be

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