Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, frontline workers such as doctors and nurses were rightly touted for their heroism. Sometimes, however, it felt like those working alongside them — namely, hospital social workers (HSW) — got lost in the shuffle.
And this erasure didn’t just take place in public opinion. New research from Fordham GSS Professor Lauri Goldkind, Ph.D., shows that HSWs did not receive the internal support they needed, either.
The Research at a Glance
Golkind’s article, “‘You Hear About These Healthcare Workers, You Never Hear About the Social Workers’: Hospital Social Workers and Collective Care in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was published this May in Qualitative Health Research.
Through in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 27 HSWs, Goldkind and her colleagues gained critical insight into the challenges these professionals faced. Using a rigorous qualitative method called Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA), the researchers explored the HSWs’ experiences, allowing themes to emerge directly from their narratives while acknowledging the researchers’ own role in interpreting the stories.
The study identified four key themes across interviews:
- Organizational Scarcity
- Key Takeaway: Hospitals did not provide employees with adequate resources to support their physical and psychological health, as well as their safety
- Organizational Failures
- Key Takeaway: Organizational failures such as confusing and contradictory policy guidelines, staff shortages, increased patient caseloads, and shifting expectations of their work tasks often created cultures of despair in the social work staff, leading to burnout and negative feelings of self-worth.
- Care Responsibilities
- Key Takeaway: In the absence of robust crisis management plans, social workers took on expanded care responsibilities both within and outside the social work department, struggling with their own well-being and the need to prioritize self-care
- Challenges of Virtual Care
- Key Takeaway: Many hospitals’ disaster response plans did not include a technology implementation scheme, leaving staff on their own to implement ad-hoc technology enhanced practices for connecting patients and families. This lack of digital infrastructure led to frustrations across all parties of the caring relationship including those inside and outside the hospital environment
Why This Matters Now
While the pandemic may have exacerbated these systemic issues, they long predate COVID.
Lack of support and recognition, unfortunately, often mar the hospital work setting, leading to widespread burnout and rapid turnover — particularly among social workers. However, through their research, Goldkind and her colleagues may have found the start to a solution: collective care.
Collective care shifts self-care responsibility from the individual to the wider organization in a structured framework. In a collective care model, the study said, leaders act as stewards of care, ensuring that both the organization and its people take care of themselves. This fosters a mindset of community reciprocity and distribution, significantly easing the burden off those who frequently face it alone.
“The collective care model is particularly relevant to social workers, for whom self-care is a foundational practice,” the study reads. “While research shows that self-care can aid workers in building professional resilience … our findings reveal that self-care as a coping tool was viewed as insufficient and unrealistic by these HSWs in the context of the pandemic.”
Where We Go From Here
Goldkind’s article is a blueprint for hospital policy change, advocating for a holistic care model that nurtures both patient and employee well-being. Implementing this mindset now will improve hospital operations on a day-to-day basis and better prepare these institutions for the next health crisis.
“The reliance on individual self-care during the pandemic proved insufficient in mitigating the impact of these stressors,” the article reads. “In preparing for future crises, healthcare organizations should establish cultures of collective care to mitigate excessive stress and burnout.”
