Research On The Role Distance Of Medical Social Workers In Prevention And Control Of COVID-19

The sudden Covid-19 outbreak is regarded as a public health emergency of global concern by the World Health Organization because of its high infectivity,high mortality and long latency.Medical institutions are the front line to fight the epidemic,so it is of theoretical and practical significance to analyze the role distance of medical social workers during the epidemic in Covid-19.Under the framework of role theory,this paper combs the role expectation of medical social workers during the Covid-19 epidemic from macro,meso and micro levels,analyzes the role practice of medical social workers in the social work department of s hospital in Guangdong province,explores the manifestations and reasons of the phenomenon of role distance,and finally puts forward corresponding countermeasures based on the analysis of the reasons,in order to bridge the role distance in the role practice of medical social workers.It is found that,first of all,many subjects at macro,meso and micro levels put forward the role expectation of medical social workers with diversified functions,strong professionalism and effectiveness requirements.On the whole,these role expectations involve six service categories,including psychological counseling service,support and guarantee service,resource processing service,publicity and advocacy service,relationship coordination service and diagnosis and treatment guidance service.Both depth and breadth are required in the service process.Secondly,although the medical social workers in S Hospital of Guangdong Province have carried out role practice in five aspects: visiting guidance,psychological counseling,support and guarantee,publicity and advocacy,and resource handling,the services provided by role practice in each category cannot fully respond to the role expectations with high expectations and requirements.There are problems of single role practice,lack of professionalism and effectiveness,which reflect the role distance between role practice and role expectation of medical social workers,and the lack and failure of role function of medical social workers in the prevention and control of Covid-19 epidemic.Thirdly,in the exploration of the reasons,starting from the subject-object dual framework,it is found that medical social workers are objectively faced with the access barrier of administrative emergency management mechanism imposed by the hospital,and subjectively have the problem of insufficient active embedding.By analyzing the role distance in combination with the timeline and the subject-object dual framework,it is found that the participation of medical social workers changes with the change of attitudes and mutual influence between subject and object.Finally,based on the analysis of the causes,this paper puts forward countermeasures to crack the role distance from both subjective and objective aspects.Objectively,macro-national policies and meso-medical institutions need to break down barriers to access,providing legal system guarantee for medical social workers’ intervention,while subjectively,they need to start with meso-professional community and micro-medical social workers themselves,strengthen active embedding,and improve the participation of medical social workers in public health emergencies.