Need for social work interventions in the emergency department

ABSTRACT

This paper reports findings from a qualitative study conducted on the Need for Social work interventions in the Emergency Department (ED) at a large tertiary care center in India. The emergency department is an important social work intervention point for individuals with various psychiatric, medical, and social needs who have little or no additional interaction with social services. Social workers are specially trained to understand the impact of social factors on health outcomes and provide interventions that address social barriers to improving health and accessing community resources; social workers are well prepared to provide services in the emergency department. However, limited research is available to understand the impact of psychosocial services in the emergency department. We aimed to identify areas which require integrated social work services and coordination to address the psychosocial issues within the ED. Interviews with 10 healthcare workers are analyzed thematically. Recurring themes throughout the interviews confirm the need for providing social work interventions to ensure the medical, psychological, and social care needs in the emergency department.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergency
• social work
• healthcare workers
• psychosocial

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants included in the study and the emergency department staff who responded to our repeated queries during the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics

Ethics committee approval for this study was obtained from the institutional ethics committee of Government Medical College, Kozhikode, Kerala (Ref No. GMCKKD/RP2022/IEC/28).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the State board of medical research (SBMR), Government of Kerala grant of Rs. 1,00,000.