Readers may remember that in October 2019, I wrote to the hospital complaints manager about the lack of social work provision in the hospital. Since that time, I have kept up pestering the clinical nurse manager in the dialysis unit about this issue. As I said back then, social work can

“provide knowledge and skills that healthcare organizations and institutions could use to help their patients. Patients with health problems often experience personality and social environment difficulties while trying to manage their disease, especially chronic diseases. The overall goal of social work in healthcare is to prevent and reduce negative social and psychosocial consequences of diseases and to encourage and teach these patients how to use their own resources. This work includes helping individuals find strategies to cope with the difficulties of living with a chronic disease.”

Miller Fitzergald J. Coping with chronic illness: Overcoming powerlessness. FA Davis, cop, Philadelphia 2000 in Sverke Annette (2017) The Importance of Social Work in Healthcare for Individuals with Rheumatoid Arthritis, Quality in Primary Care, [accessed 2019-10-29] at http://primarycare.imedpub.com/the-importance-of-social-work-in-healthcare-forindividuals-with-rheumatoid-arthritis.php?aid=19700

I am pleased to report that two medical social workers have started to work at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Tullamore. The clinical nurse manager has told me that she will be inviting them to the multidisciplinary renal meeting. She will update me with more information after that.

I hope that the social work provision will be extended to the dialysis patients who receive their care at the B Braun unit in Port Laoise, as it is a spoke unit off from the department in Tullamore. We wait and see.