Social Work in Health Care: A Training Program

Background and Purpose: Unmet behavioral health and social needs are major contributors to poor health. Social work care management is one effective strategy for addressing these needs because social workers promote health, enhance hope, and improve health care outcomes. Despite a great need for social work services in health care systems, there is a dearth of well-trained social workers with a health care specialization. Additionally, there is a limited number of schools of social work that offer this specialization. To bolster training for social workers in health care, RUSH University Medical Center created a certificate training program which is currently in the development phase. In this poster, we will describe the certificate as well as present data from our pilot cohort about their experiences interacting with the certificate material.

Methods: In 2024, with funding from the Cigna Foundation, the team at RUSH created a seven-month pilot program aimed at increasing knowledge, confidence, and skills for working in health care for current social work students and social workers who were thinking about transitioning into the health care space (N=10). This program was called the Social Work in Health Care Training Program (SWICH-TP). Part of this training program involved piloting the certificate training material. In addition to certificate material, this training program offered 25-continuing education credits in addition to wraparound supports, including weekly one-to-one mentorship, case study discussions, webinars, resources, and in-person events.

Results: Pre- and post-pilot surveys and interviews were completed to gain insight into how to best support social workers interested in health care as well as to better understand what certificate material resonated and what did not. These data revealed that participants felt more prepared, knowledgeable, and interested in working in health care after completing the training program.

Conclusions and Implications: Despite being integral members of the health care team, employers report difficulty recruiting and retaining adequately trained social workers. Barriers include limited training and educational opportunities in health care and a preference for hiring social workers with advanced licensure, which is time-consuming and costly. Through the pilot work, we were able to better understand how the students in our pilot cohort engaged both with the certificate training material and other aspects of this program. The survey and interview data additionally enabled us to hone the certificate material as we work towards launching it in the coming year. The outcomes of this work have both practice and policy implications as we begin to better understand what social workers interested in the health care space need to be well-prepared.