4 Tips for Effective Patient Advocacy in Social Work

While hospitals and clinics work around the clock to take care of patients, outside these walls, social workers also play their role diligently. These professionals play an integral role in patient advocacy.

As a professional social worker, you ensure patients can tap into the healthcare system and access the services they need that will help them improve their health. This will reduce the burden on the healthcare sector and give patients the tools they need to empower themselves and focus on their well-being. But how do you become a key player in patient advocacy and ensure they get the care they deserve?

Here’s what you need to know.

Illustrate Your Experience 

Before you can work with patients, you must demonstrate your skills and expertise in caring for patients. As a social worker, you have a delicate job. Various institutes like medical care centers, community welfare offices, and even public health departments need to know you can work and guide patients. To convince them, you need to exhibit your skills, and creating a social work resume is one of the most effective ways.

A well-crafted resume demonstrates your experience. It may provide valuable insight into the kind of patient body you’ve worked with, how you helped them connect with the needed medical services, and how you were crucial in coordinating a care plan.

A clear-cut social work resume can illuminate your communication and interpersonal skills. Working with patients requires good communication. You can guide your patients to look after them better if you tell them what to do. Likewise, you can’t vouch for your patients unless you know how to present their cases to hospitals. You should highlight the importance of creating a more inclusive and diverse healthcare infrastructure.

A good resume contains all the details of your work experience, allowing potential employers to gain an insight into what makes you stand out as a social worker and what milestones you’ve achieved in your career so far working with patients.

Build Trust

Give your patients the space to be comfortable, share their concerns, figure out what healthcare outcomes they’re trying to achieve, and advocate for them accordingly. It would help if you tried to be proactive while answering their questions and provide them with contact details like your email address to encourage them to develop a relationship with you further. Establishing trust also encourages your patients to be more forthcoming with you; they’re more receptive to your guidance and may not delay getting the proper treatment.

Educate Your Patients

Educating patients is a multi-layered process. You must guide your patients on their situation, breaking down complex medical terms and explaining how the treatment improves their health.

Educating your patients involves connecting them to resources like pamphlets and brochures that can further increase their understanding. This includes videos and articles detailing their health patterns and possible treatment routes. Invite other healthcare professionals to talk to their patients if they need extra counseling regarding their health and treatment. Going the extra mile facilitates you in educating them.

Walk Through Patient Rights

As a social worker, you must know your patient’s rights well. These include laws, regulations, and policies protecting your patient’s healthcare rights, privacy, and informed consent. For example, if you operate in California, your patients can access copies of their medical records, refuse treatment, and get a summary of the hospital charges levied on them. These rights ensure that your patients get the best possible care, which reduces the chances of medical malpractice, and they understand what is being done to them.

Therefore, ensure you detail your patient’s rights to them. Start by explaining the policies and procedures according to which a hospital operates. Suppose your patient has to undergo an invasive treatment; in such cases, they are entitled to know what this treatment plan is, the possible side effects they may experience, and what are their chances of success. If the patient is unhappy with what they learn, they can decline the treatment option. Once a decision has been made, a hospital cannot coerce, threaten or force a patient to give in. The staff has to uphold the framework of informed consent.

Likewise, a patient has every right to know how they will be billed, where their insurance can no longer provide them coverage, and what may be the total cost of their treatment. Informing your patients of their rights allows transparency.

But, it would help if you tailored these discussions to your patient’s needs. This is because every patient is unique; while some may understand their rights immediately, others take longer to know what you tell them. To foster self-advocacy, take your time in explaining your patient’s rights to them.

Final Thoughts

Social workers are essential in advocating for patient rights in the healthcare sector. As a social worker, your job requires you to act as a bridge between patients and healthcare services. Therefore, to ensure that your patients are well looked after and getting their needs met, you must learn how to advocate for them. Advocacy is a multifaceted concept. It requires educating, counseling, guiding, and explaining the healthcare framework to your patients. Not only does this ensure patients are connected to the right kind of help, it saves them from delaying their treatment and worsening their health.