SWEC 4 || Module 1 ||

MODULE 1 Weeks 1–3  •  Concepts of Health and Medical Social Work

 Ptra. Kathryn B Santiago, RSW MSW MMin
Instructor

MODULE OUTCOME Introduce the historical developments of Social Work in medical settings, its existing status, and its development.

 

Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Differentiate health, hygiene, disease, illness, and handicap/disability using standard definitions and social work language.

2. Define medical social work and explain its meaning, objectives, and scope in hospital and community settings.

3. Trace the historical development of medical social work in the Philippines and describe its present status.

4. Describe how a medical social work department is organized and administered in a hospital.

 

Pre-Assessment

Answer in your notebook before reading the lesson. Do not look up answers yet.

1. In your own words, what is the difference between disease and illness?

2. Have you ever observed a social worker in a clinic or hospital? What did that person seem to do?

3. Why would a hospital need a social worker if doctors and nurses already care for the patient?

4. Name one Philippine law or program you already know that relates to health or social work.

Lesson 1.1  •  Core Concepts: Health, Hygiene, Disease, Illness, and Handicap

Health

The World Health Organization describes health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. For the medical social worker this definition is not a slogan. It is a working map. A patient whose laboratory results have improved may still be unwell if fear, stigma, debt, or family conflict remains untreated. Health is therefore bio-psycho-social and, in the Christian college tradition of this institution, also spiritual.

In practice, health is also a resource for living. A mother who can work, care for children, and participate in barangay life is using health as capacity, not only as a medical status.

Hygiene

Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help maintain health and prevent the spread of disease. It includes personal hygiene (handwashing, oral care, sanitation of the body), domestic hygiene (safe water, waste disposal, food safety), and institutional hygiene (infection control in wards and clinics). Medical social workers do not replace sanitarians, but they often discover that a family’s “non-compliance” is actually a hygiene-and-poverty problem: no running water, shared toilets, or inability to buy soap and clean dressings.

Disease

Disease is the pathological process diagnosed by biomedical criteria—an abnormality of structure or function that can be named, classified, and often measured (for example, pulmonary tuberculosis confirmed by sputum test, or diabetes confirmed by blood glucose). Disease language belongs first to medicine. The social worker must understand it well enough to interpret what the diagnosis means for daily life, work, school, fertility, income, and relationships.

Illness

Illness is the lived experience of being unwell. Two patients may have the same disease and completely different illness experiences. One person with hypertension may feel nothing and ignore medicines. Another may feel terrified after a parent died of stroke. Illness includes symptoms, meaning-making, fear, hope, stigma, and the sick role. Medical social work lives in this space between the chart and the person’s story.

Handicap, Impairment, and Disability

Older texts used handicap to mean the social disadvantage that results from impairment or disability. Contemporary practice, consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Philippine law (Republic Act No. 7277, the Magna Carta for Persons with Disability, as amended), prefers person-first or identity-respecting language and the social model of disability. Impairment is a problem in body function or structure. Disability arises when society’s barriers—stairs without ramps, stigma, inaccessible services—interact with that impairment. The medical social worker assesses both the health condition and the barriers that turn a condition into exclusion.

Lesson 1.2  •  Medical Social Work: Meaning, Definition, Objectives, and Scope

Meaning and definition

Medical social work is the practice of social work in health settings. It applies social work values, knowledge, and skills to the psychosocial dimensions of health, illness, disability, and health-care systems. The worker helps patients and families deal with the social and emotional impact of illness, obtain resources, participate in treatment decisions, and return to the highest possible level of functioning.

A working definition you may use in this course: Medical social work is a professional helping process in health-care settings that assesses and responds to the psychosocial needs of patients and their families so that they can participate in treatment and recover, or live with illness, in dignity.

Objectives

• Help the patient be understood as a whole person, not only as a diagnosis.

• Reduce social and emotional barriers to diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and discharge.

• Mobilize family, community, and institutional resources (PhilHealth, PCSO medical assistance, DSWD AICS, LGU aid, church and NGO support).

• Promote patients’ rights, informed consent, and ethical care.

• Support the health team through psychosocial assessment and care planning.

• Contribute to health education, prevention, and community health programs.

• Advocate for accessible, just, and compassionate health services, especially for disadvantaged groups.

Scope

The scope of medical social work covers hospitals (wards, intensive care, specialty units), out-patient departments, emergency and crisis care, rehabilitation centers, hospices and palliative units, mental health facilities, public health and community-based programs, occupational health, school-linked health services, and medico-legal or child-protection interfaces. The method mix includes casework, group work, family work, community organization, and social action. Documentation, inter-agency referral, and discharge planning are core, not extra.

Lesson 1.3  •  Historical Development of Medical Social Work in the Philippines

Medical social work did not begin as a separate profession in the Philippines. It grew from hospital charity, public health campaigns, and the later professionalization of social work.

Early roots

During the American colonial period, public hospitals and sanitary campaigns treated disease as a public problem. Almoners and welfare workers in Western hospitals had already shown that poverty, housing, and family stress affect recovery. Philippine hospitals gradually recognized that medical treatment failed when patients could not buy medicines, return for follow-up, or understand instructions.

Professionalization

Social work education and hospital social service expanded in the mid-twentieth century. Republic Act No. 4373 (1965) first regulated social work and the operation of social work agencies in the Philippines. Republic Act No. 9433 later created the Professional Regulatory Board for Social Workers and strengthened the identity of licensed social workers (RSW). Hospital social service units became a recognized part of tertiary hospitals, including government centers such as the Philippine General Hospital and regional medical centers, as well as private and faith-based hospitals.

Policy context that shaped medical social work

• The Department of Health (DOH) public health programs created roles for social workers in TB, HIV, maternal health, mental health, and disaster response.

• PhilHealth and later the Universal Health Care Act (Republic Act No. 11223) changed how patients pay for care and increased the demand for navigation, benefit explanation, and point-of-service assistance.

• The Mental Health Act (Republic Act No. 11036) expanded psychosocial care beyond psychiatric hospitals into general hospitals and communities.

• Child protection, VAWC (RA 9262), and medico-legal protocols placed social workers at the intersection of health and justice.

Present status

Today medical social work in the Philippines is a licensed professional practice. Departments vary in size and authority. In well-staffed tertiary hospitals the social service office manages intake, means assessment for medical social service classification, counseling, discharge planning, and links to assistance programs. In smaller facilities one worker may cover the entire hospital. Common constraints include high caseloads, late referrals (“call social service when the patient cannot pay”), limited private space for counseling, and confusion of the social worker with a billing clerk or charity officer. The developmental task of the profession is to keep the psychosocial and advocacy identity of medical social work visible, not only the resource-mobilization function.

Lesson 1.4  •  Organization and Administration of Medical Social Work Departments

A hospital medical social work department is usually under the Office of the Medical Director or allied to Patient Services / Medical Ancillary Services. A typical structure includes a department head (RSW with experience), staff social workers assigned by ward or program (pediatrics, surgery, oncology, emergency, out-patient), and clerical support for records and assistance processing.

Core administrative functions

• Intake and psychosocial screening of referred patients.

• Social case study reports and means classification when required by hospital policy.

• Counseling, crisis intervention, and family conferences.

• Coordination with attending physicians, nurses, nutrition, rehabilitation, and chaplaincy.

• Referral to internal and external resources and follow-up of pending assistance.

• Discharge planning and after-care arrangements.

• Documentation, statistics, and quality improvement.

• Staff development, student supervision, and volunteer coordination.

Good administration

Effective departments have written policies on referral criteria, response time, confidentiality, after-hours coverage, and handling of medico-legal and protection cases. They protect a private interview room. They do not allow the social worker’s entire day to be consumed by paper processing of financial assistance. Administration must also attend to staff care: secondary trauma, moral distress, and burnout are occupational hazards of medical social work.

 

FAITH INTEGRATION Jesus’ healing ministry treated bodies and restored people to community (see, for example, the cleansing of persons with leprosy and their return to social life). Medical social work continues that logic: treatment is incomplete until the person can belong again. Serving “for the glory of God,” as the College Mission states, includes competent, ethical, and tender care of the sick and their families.

Learning Activities

Activity A  •  Concept map (individual)

Draw a one-page concept map with HEALTH at the center. Branch to hygiene, disease, illness, and disability. Under each branch write one Philippine example (for instance: open defecation and diarrhea; smear-positive TB; a fisherfolk who stops working after a stroke; a child with cerebral palsy excluded from class). Submit in class during Week 2.

Activity B  •  Mini interview (pair)

Interview one relative or neighbor who has used a hospital in the last two years. Ask only: What helped besides medicine? What made care harder? Write a 300-word summary using the language of this module (illness experience, resources, barriers). Do not include real names.

Activity C  •  Department sketch (group of 4)

Using Lesson 1.4, sketch an organizational chart of a 200-bed provincial hospital social service department. Label positions, referral flow, and three written policies you would insist on. Present in 5 minutes.

Assessment Tasks

1. Quiz (Week 3): short identifications and two essay items on definitions and Philippine history of medical social work.

2. Reflection paper (500–700 words): “Why medical social work is more than financial assistance.” Integrate at least one syllabus reference and one faith insight. Due end of Week 3.

3. Participation in the group department sketch.

Module 1 References

• Veneracion, Ma. C. J. (2003). Social work in the Philippines: Tradition and profession.

• De Guzman, L. (1992). Introduction to social work.

• Mendoza, T. (2008). Social work and social welfare (3rd ed.).

• International Federation of Social Workers. Global definition of social work.

• World Health Organization. Constitution of the WHO (definition of health).

• Republic Act No. 9433; Republic Act No. 11223; Republic Act No. 11036; Republic Act No. 7277.

Prepared by Rev. Rolando E Santiago, ThD DPM