“Working within broken systems”: Social workers bridge the fractures of U.S. healthcare: A qualitative inquiry on moral injury

Pari Thibodeau, Aprille Arena, Hannah Wolfson, Michael Talamantes and Karen Albright

Social Science & Medicine, 2024, vol. 358, issue C

Abstract: Healthcare social workers (HSWs) in the United States are integral to interdisciplinary teams and health services. HSWs have a unique role in healthcare, as they care for their patients' psychosocial needs, through case management and clinical services. There is a gap in understanding how HSWs are impacted by their healthcare work. This study aims to understand the experience of moral injury, a marker of well-being, amongst HSWs in one state in the United States. Moral injury is the moral transgression (or boundary breaking) by oneself or someone in a position of power in high stakes situations and the negative outcomes of those experiences. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 HSWs in August of 2022. Thematic analysis was used to understand the lived experience of moral injury for HSWs. Three themes emerged: 1) HSWs’ definition and examples of moral injury; 2) HSWs situated in the “in-between” of policy and practice; and 3) upholding social work values within the medical model. These findings impact healthcare practice and policy, in delineating what falls within the bounds of social work, changing the workflow of health services, and creating further opportunities for interdisciplinary training, well-being initiatives, and systems-level changes. The findings from this work highlight the importance of understanding the moral impact of healthcare work on social workers, which should be further examined in depth not only amongst HSWs but also across the healthcare workforce.

Keywords: Moral injury; Well-being; Healthcare; Workforce; Social work; Health systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624007160
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:358:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624007160

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117262

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().