¢Ù Qin Jiaqi (first from right), a medical social worker at the Social Service Department of Beijing Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital, routinely visits patients after heart transplantation in the Department of Cardiac Surgery. ¢Ú Medical social workers at the China Rehabilitation Center conduct a life ability reconstruction training camp for hospitalized patients. ¢Û Ye Xiaobin, a medical social worker at the China Rehabilitation Center, organizes the "Zhongkang Children's Cup" calligraphy competition for hospitalized rehabilitation children. ¢Ü At the 2024 Capital Medical Social Worker Festival, Xiaolong (pseudonym), who had both upper limbs amputated, and his family shared their experiences with medical social worker Ye Xiaobin in front of the camera. At the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympic Games, Xiaolong opened his arms and embraced the world on the stage. Photo provided by the interviewee

In June this year, the Central Social Work Department announced the number of people who have obtained the social worker professional qualification certificate - 1.161 million. At the same time, 1.889 million people signed up for the 2024 China Social Worker Professional Qualification Examination, setting a new record.

At the grassroots level, social workers are distributed in the fields of child welfare, youth affairs, and elderly care services. Some medical social workers provide services in medical fields. They do not prescribe medicine or go to the operating table, but provide patients with social and psychological support for non-medical diagnosis and non-clinical treatment. In other words, psychological counseling, cultural course tutoring, economic assistance, legal and policy consultation, and even home barrier-free environment design and other seemingly complicated projects are all within the scope of medical social workers' services.

"We are companions and supporters of patients and their families. Everything we do is to allow patients to get better medical treatment." Qin Jiaqi, a post-90s medical social worker at Beijing Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital, has been in the industry for 10 years and described medical social workers in this way.

According to data from the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, by the end of 2023, there will be 130 medical and health institutions and 337 medical social workers in Beijing carrying out medical social work, showing a good trend of year-on-year growth. Among them, many people born in the 1980s, 1990s and even 2000s have been certified and have become companions and companions who "often help and always comfort" in the mouths of patients.

Intervention: Wear a white coat, but don¡¯t ¡°cross the line¡±

The time that medical social workers come into contact with patients can be as short as less than a day or as long as several years. But from the moment of contact with the patient, ¡°professional companionship¡± begins.

Similar to most medical social workers, Yan Yu, a medical social worker at Peking University Third Hospital, is accustomed to calling contact with patients the beginning of case intervention. ¡°Intervention¡± must have a sense of boundaries. Although we wear white coats, we are not doctors and cannot cross the line.¡±

Yan Yu has been providing services in the emergency department for a long time. She introduced that ¡°the emergency department is mainly responsible for saving lives.¡± Medical social workers usually intervene after the patient¡¯s condition stabilizes. They first fully understand the patient¡¯s condition from the attending physician and evaluate the patient¡¯s needs from the social worker level before they can provide services.

For Qin Jiaqi, each ¡°intervention¡± is different: it may be a sentence like ¡°Do you need help?¡± or it may be a warm hug.

"It may seem like a casual chat, but we all have a scale in our minds." Qin Jiaqi said that during daily ward rounds, medical social workers will provide practical help to patients and their families, such as dispatching economic assistance resources, providing free accommodation for those who come to Beijing from other places for medical treatment and have housing difficulties, and helping patients in hospice wards realize their "wish lists".

At the China Rehabilitation Research Center, social worker Ye Xiaobin faces a more complicated situation. "We will encounter many particularly complex issues involving law and compensation," Ye Xiaobin explained. Some patients come to the rehabilitation center due to work-related injuries or other accidental injuries, and they have to spend time and energy to deal with compensation issues during the rehabilitation process. This is completely unfamiliar to most patients, so they need the help of medical social workers.

Ye Xiaobin gave an example. A little girl was accidentally injured while practicing bending down in a dance institution, causing spinal cord injury and lifelong paralysis. The family did not know how to apply for compensation. Based on the existing legal knowledge reserves and previous experience in taking over similar cases, the medical social worker told the family how to fight for their legal rights and interests through litigation and apply for compensation for accidental injuries.

There is only a wall separating Ye Xiaobin's office, and children can always be seen doing homework or reading in the room on the other side. He introduced that most of these children are disabled due to acquired disabilities, and the social workers and interns in the department need to help them complete the adaptive work before school enrollment during the non-rehabilitation training time, including communicating with peers, counseling psychological emotions, etc., and sometimes they will help children with homework. "From the patient's admission to the hospital to the final smooth return to school, family and work, social workers are involved in psychological and emotional counseling, legal and policy consultation, disability adaptation, reconstruction of living ability, school enrollment and employment guidance, and barrier-free environment transformation." Ye Xiaobin said.

In fact, after officially taking up their posts, medical social workers also need to learn knowledge of disciplines such as law, psychology, and basic medicine. In the words of Qin Jiaqi, "We all learn by doing and do by learning."

Qin Jiaqi majored in social work in undergraduate studies, while the medical social workers in the same department not only come from social work majors, but also have professional backgrounds in law, psychology, etc. After joining the job, they not only need to supplement their medical knowledge, but also need to combine the professional field of social work, "pick out which part the social worker can intervene and cooperate with".

"If it is within the scope of social work professional field, try to do the best; if it is not within the scope of social work service, we must find out who is responsible, and then guide the patients and their families on how to do it, and provide maximum support when they are confused and helpless." Zhang Lei, director of the Social Service Department of Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital, said.

Service: Often help, heal each other

If "occasionally heal, often help, always comfort" is a medical saying, then "often help, heal each other" is undoubtedly a true portrayal of the relationship between medical social workers and patients.

Yan Yu believes that coming and going in the emergency room in a hurry and being unknown is the norm for medical social workers. She said that sometimes, just after she intervened in a case, the patient was transferred to another hospital or died. There were also many patients who had served who did not know what medical social workers did until they were discharged from the hospital. "But being able to help them is the meaning and motivation of my work."

In order to improve the medical experience of patients, Yan Yu and his colleagues collected 300 patient medical records through questionnaires and interviews, involving medical procedures, medical environment, etc. After analysis and summary, Yan Yu handed over the suggestions to the relevant departments of the hospital.

In the more than one year since she joined the company, Yu Xinran, a post-00 medical social worker at Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital, has recorded many stories of doctors and patients--

A 6-year-old patient, Kang Ming (pseudonym), became "unsociable" due to periodic vomiting. During daily rounds, Yu Xinran found that she was interested in painting, so she brought paintbrushes and paper. After a period of time, Kang Ming's paintings were placed in the pediatric ward and on Yu Xinran's workstation.

In April this year, when Kang Ming's mother came to the hospital to get medicine, she made a video call to Kang Ming.

"I didn't expect that a 6-year-old child would still remember me more than half a year after being discharged from the hospital, and I didn't expect that what I did would have such a lasting impact on her after she left the ward." Yu Xinran said.

The medical social workers of the Social Service Department of Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital all remember the story of "a plastic bag of Hada". Medical social worker Zhang Daoze said that in 2023, 15 Tibetan families from Qinghai were admitted to the hospital together for the treatment of complex echinococcosis. At that time, Zhang Daoze almost "transformed" into a housekeeper, trying his best to assist the medical team in professional support work, contacting free accommodation for the patients' families, connecting with catering needs, connecting with economic assistance resources, and assisting translators in doctor-patient communication.

After the 15 families finished their treatment, they presented a plastic bag of Hada to the medical social workers of the Social Service Department and presented a plaque.

Qin Jiaqi also mentioned her agreement with the "wind-like woman". This female patient was the first patient Qin Jiaqi intervened after joining the company. Since the patient had traveled to many places when she was young, Qin Jiaqi simply called her "a woman like the wind". In 2021, the patient said that her last wish was to go to the Summer Palace again with her family in the spring. However, the patient's condition took a sharp turn for the worse and was not suitable for leaving the hospital for travel.

So in April of that year, Qin Jiaqi took a camera and went to the Summer Palace for the first time. Walking on the tour route specially designed by social workers and family members, he took pictures of the beautiful spring scenery of the Summer Palace and brought them back to show the patients one by one.

From then on, Qin Jiaqi would go to the Summer Palace to enjoy the spring every April, like an agreement with the "woman like the wind": live a good life and live up to the spring.

Exchange: From fighting alone to working as a team

As early as 2010, in order to better promote the development of social work and volunteer services in Chinese hospitals and integrate the advantageous resources of hospital social work and volunteer services, the Chinese Hospital Association established the Chinese Hospital Association Hospital Social Work and Volunteer Service Working Committee.

Since then, medical social workers have gradually entered the public's field of vision.

According to the data of Beijing Municipal Health Commission, from 2022 to 2023, Beijing has carefully cultivated a number of innovative, replicable and popularizable medical social work service projects in different fields such as hospital wards, emergency departments and outpatient clinics, covering different diseases such as infectious diseases, tumors, children's blood diseases, cleft lip and palate, obstetrics, cognitive disorders, adolescent emotional disorders, assisted reproduction, etc., integrating rehabilitation management, chronic disease management, palliative care, multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment teams, providing patients and their families with psychological counseling, assistance in difficulties, doctor-patient communication, social support and other humanistic services, improving patients' medical experience.

"We have a clear feeling that we used to fight alone, but after the Beijing Municipal Health Commission issued a policy on medical social workers in 2020, we now have comrades-in-arms." Ye Xiaobin said that nowadays, in his spare time, he often goes to colleges and universities that offer social work majors to share his professional knowledge, and accepts interns from colleges and universities who are majoring in social work to intern in the hospital, follow medical social workers to make rounds, organize group activities, etc. "Because the situation of the rehabilitation objects is relatively complicated and requires a certain amount of professional accumulation, students are not yet qualified to intervene in individual cases alone, but they will understand the entire service process and actually feel how social workers establish professional relationships with patients and provide professional services."

In addition, Ye Xiaobin also participated in the off-campus review of graduation theses of social work majors in many universities in China, guiding graduates in writing theses from the perspective of an industry mentor. He revealed that he is currently writing a paper on the theme of rehabilitation and return to society for children and adolescents with spinal cord injuries, and providing support to patients from the perspective of social rehabilitation.

Since the establishment of the Medical Social Work Professional Committee of the Beijing Hospital Association, frontline medical social workers such as Yan Yu, Ye Xiaobin, Zhang Lei, and Qin Jiaqi have also recorded basic and general online courses as supervisors, provided on-the-job education, shared experiences with hospitals in need, and provided supervisory support.

Qin Jiaqi believes that in the future, medical social workers will continue to develop towards specialization, allowing medical social workers to have "permanent roles" and "when medical staff and patients need medical social workers to play a role, let them know who to look for."

China Youth Daily¡¤China Youth Network reporter Yin Xining intern Jia Xinyang Source: China Youth Daily

Plastic Industry Video