Development Of Medical Social Work Practice In Malaysia: A Historical Perspective
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Date
2011-02
Authors
Lee, Elsie Pek Neo
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Abstract
This study adopted a qualitative design and an inductive strategy to collect
primary data through tape recorded interviews with 15 respondents who once held or
are still holding, the posts of medical social workers. The framework of analysis was
based on four areas, i.e., the medical social work practice, its institutional context,
social work education and professional standing, over three different time frames which
are 1950-1969, 1970-1989 and 1990-2010. The findings showed that the practice had
developed out of a need for supportive psychosocial services in the aftermath of World
War II, and professional training was a prerequisite for practice during the first three
decades. However a change in intake policy beginning in the mid - 1980s saw the
recruitment of graduates without social work qualifications into both public and
university hospitals, followed by the secondment of untrained welfare assistants into
public hospitals in the late 1980s, and the intake of counsellors into public hospitals in
the late 1990s. The findings showed that by 2010 these events had contributed
significantly to a subsequent diminishing emphasis in the professional role and tasks of
counselling and psychosocial support, and a significant increase in the task of social
assessments for financial problems, which narrowed perception of medical social work
to being mere welfare assistance. This perception within the hospital institution still
persists but, in the last five years the Ministry of Health has taken clear steps to reprofessionalise
medical social work practice through the enactment of an Allied Health
Professions Bill which is in the process of being drafted.
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Keywords
Medical social work