Social work is an essential component of hospice and palliative care. Social workers help people cope, and often solve, problems they are dealing with in their everyday lives. With regard to health, particularly those with serious illness or people who are reaching the last phase of their life, social workers are an integral part of a person’s health care team. In fact, Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care state that the interdisciplinary team providing palliative care includes “chaplains, nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and social workers, appropriately trained and ideally, certified in hospice and palliative care.”
Specialty certification is a process by which a nongovernmental agency verifies, based on predetermined standards, an individual’s qualifications (knowledge, skills, abilities and experience) for practice in a defined area of a field. Once established, certification in a specialty field may be preferred or required employment criteria or may be an expectation of accrediting bodies such as the Joint Commission or quality validation such as Magnet hospital designation. Employers may expect new hires to work toward specialty certification knowing that it validates their ability to practice in a specialty. Most importantly, specialty certification is one method to assure the public that a practitioner has the knowledge and skills to provide safe, high-quality care. While both nurses and physicians practicing in palliative and/or hospice care have had evidence-based competency certification programs for many years, social workers do not.
As part of its efforts to support high-need patients, including those in the later phase of their life, the Moore Foundation is supporting the University of Louisville, in close partnership with the Social Work Hospice & Palliative Care Network, to create the first specialty certification program for social workers in this field.
Read more in the press release here.
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