Research On The Strategy Of Acquiring The Right To Practice For Medical Social Workers

In the current medical practice in China,the "biomedical model" centered on disease has occupied the mainstream position,ignoring the patients’ physiological,psychological and social needs.With the support of national policies,social work has gained the legitimacy to enter the medical field.However,medical social work is still facing many practical difficulties.So,how should medical social work solve the practical dilemma of entering the "host setting" and realize the root development in the medical field?Taking medical social workers in K Hospital as the research object,this study presented two stages of obtaining the medical social workers’ right to practice in K hospital by using qualitative research methods,and analyzed the mechanism and strategies of obtaining the medical social workers’ right to practice in K Hospital.Based on Bourdieu’s theory of social practice,this paper deconstructed the acquisition mechanism of practical right into three dimensions: field,capital and habitus.In the field dimension,the professional practice space of medical social work was transformed into institutional space,physical space and social space.The capital dimension included professional capital and economic capital.In the habitus dimension,this paper mainly focused on the professional values of social work.The development of the social workers’ right to practice in K Hospital has gone through two stages from initial striving to steady gaining.In the preliminary stage of striving for the right to practice,although the medical social work in K Hospital had obtained the initial guarantee of institutional space and physical space,it still faced the dual challenges brought by low professional level and no explicit income,and the dual crisis of formalization and administration brought by the existing field habitus to social work.In the stage of gaining the right to practice steadily,medical social workers in K Hospital took themselves as the engine of multiple collaborative services and expanded the social space of medical social work practice by building internal and external social networks of the hospital.Through the creation of professional capital and economic capital increment,the medical field had been recognized by both "bottom-up" and "top-down" model;Through unremitting practice and publicity of social work values,the infiltration of professional values of social work in the field of K Hospital had been realized and the socialization of medicine had been promoted.Based on social network theory and structuralization theory,this paper analyzed the combined effects of relational and active strategies in the process of medical social workers striving for the right to practice.Relational strategy was an adaptive strategy conforming to the game rules of the field and was the shaping of actions by structural factors such as soft policy.Initiative strategy was the driving strategy for medical social workers to obtain the right to practice,and it was the individual response of the actors driven by the sense of mission to the structure.Finally,this paper put forward suggestions such as instituting a linkage referral mechanism among different departments,implementing multi-level embedment,improving the professionalism of medical social work itself,cultivating hospital decision makers’ positive attitude towards social work,and cultivating medical social workers with a sense of mission and initiative.