Medical social worker in hospital setting: An account of professionalism Srivastava Shashi Kant1, Pradhan Bijendr2 1Research Scholar, Department of Social Work, Jain Vishva Bharati Institute, Ladnun, District Nagaur, Rajasthan, India, Email: getkantshashi@gmail.com 2Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Jain Vishva Bharati Institute, Ladnun, District Nagaur, Rajasthan, India Online published on 13 June, 2019. Abstract Medical social work is extremely a challenging field of intervention with medical health settings and Medical Social Workers have to manage the deadlines, caseloads and ensure the provision of services. The medical social workers often face complex challenging cases involving patients with multiple psycho-social problems, all of which demand involvement of a case-worker to deal with their problem effectively. Therefore, a comprehensive and timely assessment of a “person in problem” is crucial. Concomitantly, there are various factors at societal level which hinder the effective functioning of medial social work in hospitals, such as, lack of fund's provision, indistinct or vague concept of a Medical Social Welfare Officer by a lay-man and his roles and services. Strong policy implications are required to enhance the productivity of MSWs for rehabilitating patients. When social work, medicine and public (community) health are viewed together as social institutions, it becomes important to define the social work contribution in the particular field in bold terms. There are evidences that social work in the health field has not yet provided itself such a framework of thinking (Lawani, BT: Medical Social Work). The researches have concluded that it is very uncertain to say that it has been too tied to the concept framework of social casework in the hospital. Top Keywords Medical Social Work, public health, community participation, cancer. Top |