Status Study On The Medical Social Work Of Shanghai

Medical social work is a series of social and psychological services in medical healthcare institutions to help patients recover from diseases. With professional knowledge and techniques of social works, it is used for the prevention, treatment and recovery of diseases. medical social work system was established in 1921 in china. After that the hospitals began to setup social work departments. During the years from 1950 to 1978, the government takes responsibility of all the social benefit systems and that ends the development of medical social work for some time. In the year of 2000, Eastern hospital of Shanghai established the first medical social work department of New China, which starts the booming of this service in other hospitals all around China. It is officially stated by guideline of new reform medicare system that medical social work should be carried out throughout the country in Apr. 6 2009. The purpose of this research focuses on the following questions, As the first city to launch medical social work, how are the social workers doing in Shanghai in the recent ten years? Are there any teams grown up to really professional ones? This is a survey research on all the seven medical social workers in Shanghai. The professional status has been investigated by data analysis and documentation research with the New Public Management (NPM) and Public goods Theory. The development status is compared with other areas and other countries. We analyzed the factors that might affect the development of medical social work in Shanghai. We also proposed some measures to push the development of this area in Shanghai.By summary, the medical social workers have already acquired fixed work position; they have specialized work object; they have particular working activities and they have been basically acknowledged by the society. But there are still lots of factors that hinder the professionalism of medical social work. The value of the work cannot be fully acknowledged for limited amount of professionals, lack of acknowledgement from society and medical industry, and dissatisfaction of social requirements. The training system has not been established for lack of training materials and approach. The professionalization policy is not consummate for lack of personnel system and qualification system.Following measures are proposed by the research.1. To push professionalism of the area by encouraging the establishment of medical social work department and consummation of legislation, and by building relative personnel system and qualification system2. To bring up professionals by enhancement of training system3. To explore a better combination of medical social work with our characteristic medical system4. To improve the acknowledgement and agreement from the society and build a medical social work system with China characteristics...