Hospital social workers provide frontline services to patients with conditions spanning the entire healthcare continuum.

Hospital social workers help patients and their families understand a
particular illness, work through the motions for diagnosis, and provide counseling about decisions that need to be made. Social workers are essential members of interdisciplinary hospital teams. Working in conjunction with doctors, nurses, and other health professionals, social workers sensitize other healthcare providers to the social and emotional aspects of a patient’s illness.

Hospital social workers use case management skills to help patients and their families address and resolve the social, financial, and psychological problems related to health conditions. Some job functions that a hospital social worker may perform within the hospital include:

· Long Term Care Planning: Assisted living, in-home personal care assisting, funding for assisted living

· Comprehensive psychosocial assessment of patients

· Coordinating patient discharge and continuity of care planning

· Advocating for patient and family needs in different settings: inpatient, outpatient, home, and in the community

· Championing the health care rights of patients through advocacy at the policy level

· Emotional support and care amongst patients and families dealing with the medical diagnosis

· Employing Crisis intervention

Social Workers are also responsible for assisting patients and family members navigate decision-making while in and out of the hospital. Nobody wants to discuss end-of-life care, but this topic is not far from most people’s minds, and most people understand the importance of discussing these decisions.

It is estimated that most Americans do not have any form of advance directive documenting their personal wishes and goals in the event they are unable to speak for themselves. Without such planning, should someone be involved in a tragic accident that leaves them incapacitated, a mixture of family members, doctors, and healthcare personnel automatically become responsible for making decisions on the patient’s behalf, often without knowing what the patient would want.

In a hospital setting, social workers tend to be the team members most concerned with psychosocial care. Social workers’ knowledge base and communication skill set make them uniquely suited to take the lead in addressing and guiding patients through effective advance care planning. Social Workers promote advanced care planning by encouraging communication among patients and their family about preferences and values of care, assisting patients in completing legal documents, and supporting families and other surrogates in respecting their loved ones’ wishes.

An Advanced Health Care Directive details a person’s choices for treatments to be performed or withheld during their care. Patient preferences for procedures such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), ventilator-assisted breathing, dialysis, and tube feeding are commonly described in a living will. A living will become part of a patient’s medical record, and shared with medical professionals.

Another document important to end-of-life planning is a durable health care power of attorney, which gives another person (also referred to as a health care proxy) the authority to make healthcare-related decisions when the principal (patient) cannot do so personally. Completing advance directives allows people to elect a second voice for themselves before needing it.

Many people complete an Advanced Health Care Directive while in the hospital. It’s highly recommended that individuals don’t wait. Attached is an Advanced Directive that can be completed, notarized, and turned in to the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Medical Records department. These documents will then be stored in the patient’s electronic medical record. Questions regarding the Advanced Healthcare Directive and Power of Attorney process can be directed to the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Case Management team at (907) 458-5400.