Key result
Social worker interviews highlight the uncertain trajectory, frequent hospitalizations, and care access difficulties in HF.
Highlights the importance of illness-informed social work that combines heart failure knowledge with social work competencies to address complex psychosocial issues.
May inform social work roles in HF care; leaves open whether integration improves outcomes.
This article describes the role of social workers in addressing the needs of people with heart failure. Although previous studies have explored the role of social workers in health care settings, few studies have addressed the challenges of specific chronic diseases such as heart failure. To address this gap in the literature, this study used qualitative interviews with health care social workers (n = 8) to obtain in-depth information about activities and challenges related to heart failure care. Findings suggest that health care social workers perceive heart failure as characterized by an uncertain illness trajectory, frequent hospitalizations, and difficulties accessing formal and informal care. These findings suggest the importance of what we term illness-informed social work, a practice that combines heart failure knowledge with social work competencies to address the complex psychosocial issues in heart failure care.
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Hopp et al. (2015) studied Heart failure (n=8). Heart failure care was evaluated on Activities and challenges related to heart failure care. Qualitative interviews with 8 health care social workers highlighted that heart failure involves an uncertain illness trajectory, frequent hospitalizations, and difficulties accessing care.
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