A palliative care social worker is a caregiver who offers advice and referrals to social services to families of people who have been diagnosed with serious illnesses at any stage of their illness, from diagnosis to death. Any palliative care social worker has five main responsibilities: assessment, training, counseling, staff support, and serving as a liaison between the client and community resources. Palliative care social workers are more personal and individualized than typical social workers, and they provide long-term, specialized holistic care to help a sick person in any way they can, whether it’s easing pain, mitigating symptoms of illness, accessing cures, or finding physical and psychological relief.
A palliative care social worker can help patients find alternative therapy, church services, and leisure activities that can improve their quality of life in addition to standard healthcare programs and services. They may also be able to assist with estate planning, wills, and funeral planning in advance. Palliative care social workers are most needed for people with acute, recurring, and usually terminal illnesses who require consistent attention on a regular basis.
A palliative care social worker is usually part of a larger palliative care team and thus does not have to juggle all of these responsibilities alone. Instead, the social worker coordinates a team that may include nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, and other specialists. A palliative care social worker’s unique contribution to the team is that, through training and experience, they are typically skilled in how to add a personal, delicate touch to traumatic situations, allowing families and children to feel more at ease. Social workers can assist the team in identifying any cultural or social factors that may be influencing how patients respond to care and the types of treatment that the family prefers.
Palliative care social workers typically begin their work with patients interviewing them, their family members, and even their friends. Following the collection of a patient’s medical history, the social worker can create a case study that the palliative care team can use to design interventions that benefit everyone involved in the patient’s life. Many healthcare systems have in-house palliative care units, which are staffed full-time palliative care social workers who serve multiple families at once. Cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome are all serious and terminal illnesses that frequently necessitate the assistance of a palliative care social worker (AIDS).