The Dilemma And Countermeasures Of Medical Social Work

In our current medical environment and medical systems, it’s still difficult for people to go to hospital when they are sick. Especially in large public hospitals which filled with thousands of people, the crowd often makes patients be at a loss what to do. The registration, inspection, taking medicine, hospitalization and other aspects all need to queue up. The tough process and long waiting time to see a doctor makes patients anxiety and worried. It’s easy to trigger conflicts between doctors and patients. The medical social work intervention can help patients relieve distress. Volunteers who managed by medical social work department can provide medical guidance services for patients and enable patients to save a lot of time. Medical social workers use professional methods to provide continuous services to patients when they are living in the hospital. Social workers offer psychological counseling, emotional guidance, accompany and support to patients and their families, to help solve economic, social and psychological problems caused by disease. They provide social resources for patients, improve the patient’s ability to self-help, to actively cooperate with the treatment, so they can recovery soon. Volunteer service and medical social workers add humanistic concerns to the whole medical service systems, and become a bridge between patients and hospital.Medical social work in China is still in the initial stage of restoration and reconstruction. Its development is facing a series of difficulties and problems. At present, medical social work in mainland is most carried out in hospitals, and more concentrated in super large hospitals of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and other first-tier cities. These hospitals usually set up medical social work department to carry out medical social work, and the hospital volunteer service is involved in the management system. Peking University People’s Hospital has set up medical social work department since 2009.Its development of medical social work is in a leading position in the Beijing area, and also has great influence in the domestic.This study takes Peking University People’s hospital as a case, mainly adopts the method of qualitative research, get to know the present situation and patients’ needs through participant observation and interviews. It analyze difficulties that medical social worker face such as shortage of talents, not being known and accepted, lack of funds, and combine foreign and domestic existing models of medical social work, try to put forward feasible advice from the level of society, government, universities and medical social workers themselves, expecting to explore feasible conventional development patterns of domestic medical social work and can be promoted.