Medical Social Work

Medical social work is a branch of social work that specializes in geriatric, public health, palliative, and inpatient medical and mental health care. Medical social workers typically work in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient clinics, community health agencies, long-term care facilities, or hospice, but can also help treat people from the comfort of their own home.

Our medical social staff works on preparing our clients for life after leaving a hospital or other residential setting.  We also provide support to patients and their families in the form of assessing the psychosocial functioning of our clients and their families, including psychosocial counseling, grief counseling, helping the patient strengthen the network of social support, case management, and so on.

The goal of our medical social work services is to help our clients restore the balance in their life, to help that person recover or maintain health and strengthen the ability to function normally in his/her day-to-day life.

We collaborate and work along with other disciplines like nursing, medicine, physical, occupational, speech, and recreational therapy.

Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and Home Health Aide (HHA)

Certified nursing assistants and home health aides share many common responsibilities in the field of health care. Both CNA and HHA provide personal care for patients and are focused on fulfilling the patient’s needs with activities of daily living.  

The key difference between a certified nursing assistant and home health aide is in their responsibilities. The home health aide is allowed to administer medication while the certified nursing assistant cannot do so. All home health aides are CNA’s, Home Health Aide is simply put as a CNA who works with people in their homes and not in a hospital or living facility.

The common for both healthcare positions is that they involve providing companionship and taking care of the patient’s activities of daily living (ADLs) and basic needs such as feeding, bathing, changing, replacing bandages and dressings, exercising, etc. Both CNA and HHA are supervised and report back to the nurses and doctors overseeing the patient’s care.