Umeå universitets logga

The number of patients living with cancer as a chronic disease is increasing. This stresses the importance of efforts to facilitate for these persons to resume a new everyday life in work, family and leisure time. In Sweden, the social worker is the professional who more than other professionals in health care represents the psychosocial perspective in rehabilitation. However, the function of the social worker in cancer care is poorly studied. The purpose of the present study is therefore to explore the function of the social worker – its present status and future prospects. In March 2016, 299 questionnaires were distributed to the social workers in Sweden practicing at least half-time in oncology. The questionnaire covered background data as affiliation, position and collaboration in an organizational context, complementary education, main tasks, but also a detailed description of their last three clinical cases, i.e. initiative and motive/subject for contact in each case. In addition, we ask the social workers to evaluate their present work and to identify requirements for improved interventions. Analysis will be conducted with descriptive statistics as well as with continuous comparisons in grounded theory. The results will display a condensed description of the background variables characterizing this group of social workers, but it will first of all focus on their clinical function and the social workers' prospects for development of the function. The conclusions will be presented in terms of a typology of different roles as social workers combined with ideas about development of these roles.