Sliding Doors: Transitions in Health Care as Opportunities

Completion of this Graduate School of Social Service class will result in the receipt of two (2) continuing education hours.

The mission and values of social workers practicing in healthcare and palliative care can be overshadowed in systems where institutional pressures, changing health status, and evolving goals force or require transitions of varied kinds: from health to illness; one setting to another; from life to death. Transitions impact patients and families and often impact staff who may or may not have contributed to the processes that anchor transition decisions. Transitions can also reflect inequity and biases, often unrecognized yet contributing to clinician distress and unarticulated harms.

The goal of this class is shared learning to consider the therapeutic opportunities implicit in transitions which may be as common as moving from hospital to home care or being admitted to, or live discharged from, a hospice program. Often these transitions create conflict or dismay as they center intersecting variables which social workers often negotiate patient and family wishes, system demands to “move the patient along,” available resources, and more. As social workers, we participate and translate systems issues to patients while deepening these discussions with colleagues by sharing relevant information about the history, culture and needs of the patient and family which brings unique meaning to transitions.

This workshop will explore transitions that occur in practice all along the continuum of illness and in varied settings to discover the possibility that even transitions mandated by systemic forces might have the potential of therapeutic benefit for patients, families, and clinicians. It is intended to shine a light on daily activities such as discharge planning or selection of a health care proxy and imagine therapeutic potential.