A Study of Social Work in General Hospitals in Iran and Designing a Model for Social Work Services

Background: Social work services are multilateral services for dmensions of prevention, social worker are a professional people who work with patient in hospital, the aims of their works are psycho-social health. Objectives: The goal of this research is to study how social work services are provided by hospitals and offer a pattern of social work services at Iranian general hospital. Materials and Methods: The research work has been conducted in two qualitative and quantitative methods. In the quantitative study, the researcher has used a questionnaire while in the qualitative section social work sections of hospitals have been studies using a case study method. The questionnaires were sent to 552 social workers and in the case study sector seven general hospitals based in Tehran, Shiraz, Semnan, Hormuzgan, Zahedan, North Khorasan and Lorestan were chosen as samples. The operational pattern has been designed on the basis of Delphi method. Results: The findings of the research indicate that social work headquarters have had a weak performance in introducing social work as a specialized profession. Their performance in establishing relationship with scientific centers has been evaluated as weak. The findings also show that these headquarters do not use social work in executive units, training courses for augmenting the scientific knowledge of social workers are inefficient, the description of duties of social workers at hospitals cannot meet the demands of visitors, nor do they correspond to the professional and scientific principles of social work, there is no sufficient support for social work and there is no enough supervision over their work. Conclusions: The duties of social workers have been defined in the three domains of psychosocial health, psychosocial treatment and psychosocial rehabilitation.