The legal clinic: helping social workers master the legal environment in health care.
The social environment for all is becoming increasingly legalized. This fact is evidenced in the extensive entitlement regulations and ethical decision-making processes surrounding health care consumers and professional providers. The authors of this paper describe a program designed to educate social workers in an acute care hospital to the legal issues and considerations that influence decision-making and interventions in social work practice. The purpose of the paper is two-fold: to highlight the program planning process in establishing and institutionalizing a Legal Clinic for social work, and secondly to stress the significance of legal content in the knowledge base of social workers in health care settings.
Blumenfield
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Department of Social Work Services, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY 10029.
Simon
E P
EP
Bennett
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C
D004496:Education, Continuing / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006786:Hospitals, Urban; D006801:Humans; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D010934:Planning Techniques; D016730:Program Development; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D012947:Social Work / Q000193:education*; D012948:Social Work Department, Hospital / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*