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Social work in hospitals around the world has a history of over 100 years. However, systematic social work in hospitals in Vietnam has only been conducted for the past 10 years. The development of social work in general and hospital social work in particular depends on various factors, resulting in differences in the roles of social work in practice among different types of hospitals and between countries with different socioeconomic contexts. This qualitative study examines the structure, functions and actual roles of social work in public hospitals in Vietnam in comparison with other countries. This study was conducted in 2021, 44 in-depth interviews were conducted with key stakeholders who develop and implement social work activities in 07 hospitals in Vietnam. The research focus on analysing the administrative structure and the functions/roles of hospital social workers, finding out barriers that undermine the development of hospital social work in Vietnam. The research outline and tools were approved by a professional evaluation board of Vietnam National University (VNU Hanoi). We conducted a defense to attain an official permission from the Ethical Research Council in National Children’s hospital, one of the main research sites and obtained certificate 393/BVNTW-VNCSKTE dated March 02, 2021. With its centralized model, hospital social work conducts three groups of functions, including: Supporting function, Cooperation function and other independent functions. It is interesting that while social work often incurs costs on hospital operations in other countries, it generates financial resources for hospitals in Vietnam. This is also the reason for the rapid development of hospital social work in Vietnam over the past 10 years.
Dang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.