List some of the activities that social workers engage in the health field.

In medical social work (now often referred to as social work in the health field), widely varying problems and situations are encountered. Social workers engage in the following activities:
 Helping terminally ill patients and their families cope

 Counseling women who have had a mastectomy

 Helping a low-income wife from a distant area find lodging in the community while her husband undergoes heart surgery

 Counseling people who are so depressed they are contemplating suicide

 Helping a single woman who has just become a mother to plan for the future

 Providing genetic counseling for a young couple who gave birth to a child with a cognitive disability

 Helping an executive of a large company make plans for the future following a severe heart attack

 Counseling a woman about her emotional reactions following a miscarriage or a stillbirth

 Being a support person to a hospitalized person with AIDS and to his or her friends and relatives

 Finding living arrangements that will provide some medical attention for people who no longer need to be hospitalized

 Counseling alcoholics and drug addicts or making appropriate referrals to other agencies

 Counseling patients who are apprehensive about undergoing surgery

 Helping someone suddenly struck with a permanent disability to adjust and make plans for the future

 Meeting with relatives and friends of patients to help interpret the nature of the medical condition and perhaps to solicit their help in formulating a treatment plan to facilitate recovery

 Counseling someone with emphysema on how to stop smoking

 Counseling a rape victim concerning her psychological reactions

 Informing relatives about the medical condition of someone who has just had a severe automobile accident