| With the China’s social and economic development and philanthropy progress, the quality of individual life has attracted more and more attention. And as an inevitable part of life, how to face death with dignity and calm has become an issue that people pay more and more attention to. Cancer has a very high death rate and is extremely difficult to be cured. It does not only seriously harm the health of the patient, but also bring about the fear of death. Against the backdrop of that the number and proportion of China’s cancerous population being the first in the world, the hospice services that aims to ease the psychological pain in cancerous patients and improve patients’ life quality in the last period of life journey, rose in response to the time.This paper, based on the hospice medical social work that the author participated during his graduate education, analyzes the problems and needs of cancerous patients from the practical level, draws the experiences and lessons from the process of practice, puts forward certain countermeasures and suggestions, studies the intervention skills used in the process of practice in order to achieve the goals of relieving the pain of patients, releasing the pressure of patients’ family members, easing conflicts between doctors and patients combining the current situation of the development of both domestic and overseas hospice service and using research methods including case interview, participants observation, etc. Through the case work and the study of the record of medical social work practice, author has found the 5 major demands of cancerous patients:pressure relief, pain easing, seeking of sense of belonging, expression of expectations and other feelings to the family, seeking of the meaning of life.In the intervention of medical social work, social workers would first establish a mutual-trust relationship with the client and get to know the basic situation. Work plan would be formulated after needs assessment of the case. Guided by the professional values of social work, social workers would conduct intervention to cancer patients using professional theories and skills. Last, the evaluation of intervention. In the last part of the paper, according to the situation of overall medical social work intervention, author puts forward that medical social workers should uphold the principles of professionalism during medical social work, flexibility in defining their roles in different cases and timely feed backs to supervisors and colleagues when in trouble. As for the practice of hospice care, author proposes certain suggestions including that social workers should build an effective social support network for their clients, be the intermediary in doctor-patient relationship, launch the power of volunteers, etc, and offers some practical experiences for sharing.Overall, while social work is developing rapidly in China now, the cancerous patients is also becoming one of the most important objects of the intervention of medical social work. The hospice service, provided by Medical social workers, is a new topic for social work in its development, as well as a new topic for social work practice. The combination of hospice care and social work is not only in line with the needs of the development of social work, but also in line with the ethical needs of social work. While medical social workers help patients to relieve pain, release pressure and build network of social support, they also achieve the due effect as intended, that is, help people to help themselves. |
