Celebrating Social Work Week
Social Work Week is March 7-13, and we’re celebrating St. Mary’s social workers—a small but mighty team of seven professionals who are an integral part of every floor and unit within the hospital.
As members of the Discharge Planning Team, social workers help patients navigate the health care continuum, provide supportive counseling, empathetic listening, and work with patients to understand their post-hospitalization options. They are essential to delivering patient-centred care.
Social workers coordinate discharges to post-acute settings such as rehab and complex care, retirement homes, supportive living environments and home with various community supports. They provide psychosocial supports and counsel patients and families through difficult health challenges, support patients with various financial programs, fill out applications and even coordinate transportation when patients are facing barriers.
“The social workers at St. Mary’s have an amazing ability to parse things out for patients, reassure them and help them understand their care needs and options,” says Olivia Fridgen, Manager of Integrated Discharge Planning. “They often see patients in crisis who need to make significant lifestyle changes and they skillfully navigate crucial conversations and use their deep knowledge of services to rally around the patient.”
With excellent communication skills and a deep knowledge of the health-care system overall, the social work team expertly works through complex situations and difficult family dynamics.
Involving social work early in the patient’s journey can uncover complex issues and reduce patient and caregiver stress. Each member of the team is assigned to support a specific floor, attends daily rounds and is considered an integral part of the multi-disciplinary team. The team also works together to case-conference about complex or difficult situations, leveraging one another’s knowledge and connections.
“The social work team moves mountains most days using their breadth of knowledge and expertise,” says Olivia. “When a social worker’s away for a day, the teams notice!”
The theme for this year’s Social Work Week—#More Than Ever—reflects the reality that the pandemic has made social work involvement more critical than ever. Patients arrive sicker and face more complicated social and economic challenges. As with every team, social work has been stretched over the past two years, working harder than ever to support patients through their journey and back to health and home.
Happy Social Work Week to this caring and hard-working team!