Medical social work roles, inter-professional collaborative practice and factors impeding practice in hospital settings: A literature review

Abstract

Aim: This article reviews literature on medical social work practice in hospital settings. The overall goal of medical social work practice in hospitals is to prevent and reduce negative psychosocial-spiritual consequences due to diseases and teach patients and families how to mobilise the available resources. Undeniably, medical social work practice is integral to medical and hospital settings, predominantly when working in a team to improve the patient’s treatment outcome. Methods: This article reviewed online research articles and reports on medical social work practice in hospital settings. Keywords used in conducting the literature review were: medical social work practice, hospital, health practitioners, roles of medical social workers, and inter-professional collaborative practice. The Boolean Operator conjunctive ‘AND’ was used in the mixture of these keywords to enlarge the search process. The databases used for electronic searches of the literature were Google Scholar, ProQuest Central, PubMed Central, and ResearchGate. Results: We conclude that medical social workers perform different roles in the hospital settings nevertheless they are not understood by health practitioners, no consensus amongst health practitioners as to whether inter-professional collaborative practice contributes to the treatment outcome of patients. Factors impeding medical social work practice in hospital settings are also discussed. We suggest that what remains to be explored are the medical practitioners’ experiences in medical social work practice in hospital settings. Findings from this reviewed article contribute significantly to the field of medical social work which is in the infancy stage, particularly in Tanzania and comparable countries.