Social Work in the Health Field: A Care Perspective

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Summary: Social work in the health field
Review: Lois Anne Fort Cowles is professor emerita from the Idaho State University in Pocatello with many years as both a clinical social worker, a teacher and researcher. In this second and revised edition she gives a comprehensive review of social work in different health care settings.
Social work in health care started in the United States in 1905, when the physician Richard C Cabot at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Internal Medicine Clinic asked the nurse Garnet I Pelton to fill up the position of hospital social worker. Two years later social work was also introduced at the Neurology Clinic at the same hospital and this way the field developed in order "to guide the patient to solve their social problems, either as a result of illness or to which illness may have been due in part". In 1913 there were social workers in 10 hospitals, in 1923 in 400 and today about 125,000 social workers are working in health care settings in the United States with social work services in 76% of psychiatric hospitals and 86% of general acute care hospitals.
The introduction in section I has two chapters on orientation to social work in the health field and fundamentals of health care social work practice. Settings at the three levels of intervention in section II has five chapters on primary care settings, hospitals, home care, nursing homes and hospice care, while health care delivery and financing in section III has two chapters on US health care system strengths and problems and a vision of future social work practice in health care.
This book is concerned with the United States and very much with adult and elderly care, which is the brunt of the work for the social worker in the health care field, but we would have like to see in a future edition entries on children, the important role of the health care social worker in the area of child abuse and maltreatment, family violence, disability both in children and adults with discussion of care in the hospital, the residential care and the home care aspects. In the index you will not find any mention of children, child abuse, disability, developmental disability, intellectual disability or mental retardation, which we feel should be issues discussed in a book on the role of the social worker in the health field. On the other hand this book gives you the basics, fundamentals and work methods as an introduction to the social worker's task in the health care settings.

Professor Joav Merrick, MD

Director, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Medical director, Division for Mental Retardation, Box 1260, IL-91012 Jerusalem, Israel. Email: [e-mail]

Isack Kandel, MA, PhD
Faculty of Social Science, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Academic College of Judea and Samaria, Ariel, Israel. Email: [e-mail]

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Summary: If you can avoid this text .. do it .. not worth the money
Review: This book is excellent for an overview of health care in social work or an introductory level course; however, if you need it for a PRACTICE course at the Master's level, this book is pretty worthless. It goes into way too much history, does not focus enough on skill requirements for each setting, the chapters are entire too repetitive, and the focus is entirely too centered on the elderly and excludes other major populations (i.e. children, women, psychosocial issues such as domestic violence and its impact on social work delivery). When the book talks about other ethnicities, it generalizes too much and buys into stereotypical views of the ethnicity in question. In addition, it goes into a lot of depth about interdisciplinary collaboration; however, it only briefly touches on collaboration with external agencies (i.e. CPS, APS, community agencies, etc). This book (as well as the author teaching it) leaves a lot to be desired. It is extremely difficult for students to "critique" the author when the author is not open to criticism. BTW, not 3 months ago, I paid $50+ for this book at the campus bookstore and on here it was listed for $40+ .. now it is at $25+ for a soft cover on here. What a rip off.