The Role of Social Workers in Palliative Care: A Review of Prerequisites and Practical Implementation

Abstract

Palliative care is a multidisciplinary practice that addresses the complex needs of individuals with serious and potentially life-threatening illnesses, their families, and caregivers. Social workers have been recognized as integral members of palliative care teams since the field's inception, fulfilling critical roles such as addressing psychosocial concerns, promoting advanced care planning, and providing grief counseling. However, social workers often encounter challenges in asserting their roles, and their capacities remain underutilized in professional palliative care delivery. This scoping review aims to investigate the prerequisites for meaningful involvement of social workers in palliative care and identify pathways and strategies for optimizing their contributions. The review identified nine substantial prerequisites operating at two levels: individual capacities of social workers and contextual factors. Key prerequisites include enhancing competence and confidence through education and training, pursuing holistic and transformational practices, fostering collaborative relationships with (para)medical professionals, clearly defining the social work role and core competencies, evaluating and documenting contributions, promoting job satisfaction and preventing burnout, providing peer support, ensuring manageable caseloads, and advocating for early introduction of palliative care in clients' illness trajectories. The interconnectivity among these prerequisites highlights the need for interventions that simultaneously address multiple factors. However, the predominance of studies from a limited number of countries and the focus on formal palliative care service delivery indicate potential gaps in understanding social work involvement in the broader context of death, dying, and bereavement. Future research should explore the relevance and implementation of these prerequisites in diverse contexts to develop targeted interventions that maximize the contributions of social workers in palliative care.