[3] In short, a medical social worker provides services in three domains: intake and psychosocial assessment, case management and supportive therapy, and discharge planning and ongoing care that extends after hospitalization.
[4] Professionals in this field typically work with other disciplines such as medicine, nursing, physical, occupational, speech, and recreational therapy.
[6] In 1895, Mary Stewart became the first lady almoner in Britain with her appointment to the Royal Free Hospital in London for a three-month trial period.
[7] Some sources credit Anne Cummins as the "mother of almoners" as she had the ability and the funding to first establish a comprehensive social work service at St Thomas's Hospital in London in 1909.
They adopted an approach similar to strength-based case management, and formal education for almoners was introduced in Australia in the early 1920s to carry out the required tasks.
[12] In Ireland, the origins of medical social work go back to paediatrician Ella Webb, the first physician in Ireland to appoint almoners to work in her dispensary for sick children that she established in the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin, and to Winifred Alcock, the first almoner appointed by Webb in 1918.
Medical Social Worker is a Singapore Ministry of Health recognized profession for psychosocial care and a required professional by bylaw in every clinical specialty department.
Garnet I. Pelton, Ida Maud Cannon and Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot were the central figures of the hospital social work.
In 1912, social worker Anne Moore conducted a study on possible dispensary abuse in New York County.