Hospital Social Work Development in Vietnam Today: Limitations and Several Solutions

Abstract

Hospital social work has been being currently quite popular in the world, particularly in developed countries such as United States of America, Australia, Singapore, etc. However, hospital social work in Vietnam, like many other developing countries, has been still being in the challenging process to perfect and meet practical needs. So as to have an effective and sustainable strategy for hospital social work development, it is necessary and important to carry out research and evaluation of difficulties and limitations in hospital social work in Vietnam today. This study was conducted based on the methods of document collection and analysis, thereby finding important examples for evaluating the difficulties and limitations of hospital social work in Vietnam. A total of 42 documents were included in the evidence and cited to ensure the scientific and convincing nature of research content. The findings show that the Vietnamese Government and the Ministry of Health, and other ministries and departments, have made many efforts in providing a legal framework for the formation and development of hospital social work, particularly from 2010 to 2015. Thanks to that, a network of social work departments / teams has been formed in almost every hospital system in the country. However, hospital social work in Vietnam, after 14 years of establishment and practical operation, has revealed many inadequacies to be resolved in relation to the legal framework, human resource development, appropriate model selection, and activity content determination. Therefore, a system of comprehensive solutions should be researched and put into practice for the purposes of developing hospital social work, meeting practical needs in the Vietnamese context, and adhering closely to the international standards, so as to improve the above situation.