Role changes of hospital social workers in South Korea

Seok In Nam, Kwonho Choi, Junpyo Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

The roles of social workers in hospitals have changed in accordance with the environmental changes in the healthcare system. Since 1958, hospital social workers have performed important roles in providing care services in South Korea. Providing psychosocial services was considered to be the most important for more than 30 years from the 1970s to the 1990s. The healthcare system has since undergone major environmental changes, yet there has been little study on the role of hospital social workers in South Korea. In order to address this research gap, this study aims to explore how the roles of hospital social workers have changed since the 2000s. We recruited 198 hospital social workers who were active members of the Korean Association of Medical Social Workers as study participants. The average age of participants was 35.36 years old (SD = 8.27), and they had an average of 8.24 years in hospital social work experience (SD = 6.35). The results indicated that the roles of financial support and community resource linkage, which were regarded to be relatively less important until the 1990s, were recognized as the most important. Given the role changes of hospital social workers in South Korea, implications are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)703-717
Number of pages15
JournalSocial Work in Health Care
Volume58
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 9 Aug 2019

Keywords

  • Hospital social work
  • role change
  • South Korea

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Role changes of hospital social workers in South Korea'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this