title: The why of practice: utilizing PIE to analyze social work practice in Australian hospitals.
abstract: This research used a collaborative approach to gain a comprehensive, quantitative understanding of the breadth and depth of the social work role in health care. Data was collected from individual interviews with all employed hospital social workers (N = 120) across five Melbourne, Australia health networks about their most recently completed case. This data was coded using a revised version of the Karls and Wandrei (1994) Person-in-Environment (PIE) tool to retrospectively analyze the reasons for social work involvement over the course of the case. The findings demonstrate that the hospital social work role is multidimensional across a number of domains but centers predominantly on assisting clients and their significant others with issues of altered social roles and functioning; particularly in relation to role responsibility, dependency, and managing associated role-change losses. The findings of this study will assist hospital social workers, managers, and academics to better describe and effectively undertake this complex work. These findings will also assist in the development of professional training and education to up-skill social workers who operate within this complex setting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mental Health, Social Work & Inter-Professional Learning, School of Health and Education, Middlesex University, London, UK. d.nilsson@mdx.ac.uk
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nilsson
authors.forename: Lynette
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Joubert
authors.forename: Lucy
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Holland
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Posenelli
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001315:Australia; D004777:Environment; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000523:psychology*; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012931:Social Environment; D012948:Social Work Department, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*