Principal Medical Social Worker

-Family Group: Allied Health

**Overall responsibilities**:

- Provide clinical expertise and leadership in psychosocial care
- Supervise and lead a team of Medical Social Workers in clinical service delivery
- Improve and/ or develop clinical processes and approaches in areas of expertise
- Lead and/ or contribute to professional education/ teaching and clinical research
- Initiate networking and collaboration with government departments and external agencies to implement strategies for effective care integration

Casework
- Lead in psychosocial assessment and intervention in complex case management of patient care that meets clinical standard of practice
- Support the delivery of clinical services by MSWs to meet clinical standard of practice
- Assist in review and audit of clinical competency standards
- Advise on complex medical cases or ethical issues carried out by multi-disciplinary team
- Identify emerging trends that require domain attention (e.g. community/social issues), and guide the development of interventions
- Lead in the delivery of domain-specific intervention (eg, running dementia counselling clinic)
- Interview/counsel and conduct psychosocial and financial assessment of patient/family and recommend intervention plans to the multi-disciplinary team towards holistic patient management

Group Work
- Identify areas of need and strategies plans to guide the design and execution of outreach plans for individuals and/ or target groups
- Educate / teach and provide mentorship in group work
- Formulate strategies to rack outcome and data collection Lead and conduct case assessment and risk assessment for complex and high risk cases. To take lead in facilitating case conference on high-risk cases

Community Work
- Initiate and develop new community development programmes in response to emerging needs
- Network with government, community, social agencies or individuals to mobilise social resources in execution of community development programmes
- Network and/ or foster partnership with key stakeholders/ policy makers and external agencies to develop programmes to support care integration
- Provide clinical expertise and leadership in psychosocial care

Professional Development and Education
- Develop the framework for supervision, mentoring and coaching that meets the needs of the department/cluster
- Ensure the system of competency assessment, clinical supervision and training of staff is delivered consistently so that the team achieves high standards of clinical practice
- Design and oversee clinical placement and educational programmes in the department
- Design, develop and execute capability building/ domain specific development programmes for MSWs
- Undertake teaching (undergraduate and post-graduate teaching) or research, and provide a bridge between practice, professional bodies and academic/ research institutes
- Provide education and leadership in a specific field of social work practice nationally and internationally by lecturing and/or through publishing research papers in professional journals
- Provide clinical supervision, mentoring, continuing education

**Programme Development and Implementation**:

- Oversees service area, and ensure goals and targets are achieved for specialized areas of health social work
- Advance expert psychosocial care programmes for patient in specialized areas of health social work (e.g. trauma, palliative, dementia)
- Develop new model of care, services, or programs based on evidence-based research
- Evaluate departmental and institutional policies and processes, and provide inputs on the development of new policies and procedures for effective care delivery

Research
- Lead, design and conduct research on current programmes/ specified issues
- Publish papers based on research outcomes and findings
- Undertake clinical research and quality improvement projects, in collaboration with clinicians, other professionals and external partners
- Supervise research projects managed by Medical Social Workers
- Foster partnership with multi-disciplinary team and/ or other agencies to deliver care plan

Professional Leadership
- Provide guidance to hospital/ campus on the development of standardised social work practice in the specialized area of health social work
- Assume a professional leadership role in Hospital/ Campus/ National / International Committees to effect quality improvement initiatives in health and social service sectors.
- Contribute to shaping the Code of Ethics, Standard of Practice, governance and agenda for the area of practice at the system level
- Management of staff performance, conflicts, and disciplinary issues and take necessary actions

**Others**:

- Actively involved in hospital and department's initiatives
- Advocate for the protection of patient's dignity, confidentiality and rights
- Lead and coordinate CARE team members in times of civil emergency or mass casualty
- Be rostered for crisis referrals during and off office hours to p