Welcome. In the previous post about defining success in hospice social work, I alluded to both the heroic feats that we can achieve, and also the value of the mundane aspects of our work.
It is important to have a grasp of what hospice social work is, but you won’t stand out if if you don’t have it when you start your first position. In a recent poll I conducted in a Facebook hospice social work forum, 31 members responded that their agency does not provide adequate training, but only 24 stated that they did. And while 45 responded that their colleagues understand the social worker role well, 31 stated that their colleagues did not. This is a large portion of teams where people don’t know what a social worker does, considering that hospice teams are small and social workers work with almost every patient.
Just what is hospice social work?
After getting to know a patient and her daughter through weekly visits over six months, she died. The nurse who first learned of the death emailed the team that the family had specifically requested a chaplain to attend the death. It was still my first year, so I didn’t feel comfortable questioning this plan at the time and I just stood back. But the next day, I explained to the director of clinical services that I felt like I should have gone. She loudly responded:
“Michael! The patient just DIED! The don’t need community resources. They need emotional support! So we send the chaplains!”
So our supervisor thought that hospice social work only involved community resource referrals. I refrained from explaining to her that as part of my job, I had been providing emotional support to this family for six months. Later I met the hired caregiver of this patient, and she told me that the daughter repeatedly asked why I wasn’t there.
It is important for social workers to know what their jobs are. And it’s important for the rest of the team to know, too.
Check back in a couple days and I’ll provide a super simple way of explaining what it is we do.