How to recognize social precarity among hospital outpatients

In a context where « operational » definitions and methods to identify socially vulnerable people were lacking, a multidisciplinary group of professionals have worked out a tool to identify them within the population consulting the public hospital outpatient sector. The sort of expertise of the social workers working in this field was analysed and the metrological quality of the tool was tested. On one hand, the results have shown that a share of 80% of the socially vulnerable population consulting in hospital was identified when using the tool. On the other hand, the results highlighted that the criterias used by social workers were highly discriminative when it comes to identify social vulnerability. These findings lead to a discussion on the relevance of identifying this population, of the methological choice made, of the metrological quality and of its use in « routine » in the hospital outpatient sector.