A Qualitative Study on the Value and Reactions of Medicial Social Workers toward Patients with HIV+

• Main Authors: CHIA-LING HUANG, 黃嘉玲
• Other Authors: LI-YU SONG
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/97152142568461393182

碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 社會政策與社會工作學系 === 88 === The number of people infected with HIV virus has increased these days, and related issues have emerged. The social work profession can’t step away from the issues, especially medical social workers. In daily practice, they have lots of opportunity to encounter the problems of patients with HIV+. This study aimed to explore how medical social workers view and react to the disease and patients. This study used purposeful sampling to recruit eight medical social workers who worked or are working with AIDS patients. The data were gathered through in-depth interview and analyzed based on grounded-theory. Five approaches taken by medical social workers were emerged from the data. They are “humanism-public benefit” approach, “acceptance-self examination” approach, “neutral-efficiency” approach, “fair-rational” approach and “respect-adjustment” approach. The “humanism-public benefit” approach emphasizes the basic right and esteem of human beings, and balance between patient’s right and public welfare. The “acceptance-self examination” approach considers self-awareness of workers and acceptance of workers toward patients important. The “neutral-efficiency” approach treats patient with fair and objective attitudes based on the professional values. Its interventions focus on realizing values held by social work profession. The “fair-rational” approach emphasizes equity and rational distribution of resources. People should be responsible for the results of their behaviors, and workers should be rational and be problem-solving oriented. The “respect-adjustment” approach is client-centered and individualistic, and workers gradually adjust their responses toward patients along with their clinical experiences. Based on the results, the following suggestions are proposed: 1. To strengthen social work education to ensure professional value system and enhance the status of this profession; 2. To expand the service network for AIDS patients; 3. To develop self-help groups of AIDS’s patients and their families; 4. To actively educate the general publics about accurate knowledge of HIV+ and AIDS.