Woes of being a Social Worker in Singapore

I seldom talk about work in my blog, but this thing is so burdensome that I feel that I need some air time here so as to make myself feel better. It has been a real bad day for the sw department today, or rather the past few days. At one point of time, boss posed this question to himself: Am I really suitable for the social service sector? To cut the long story short, our side has always been advocating for patients and their rights, because we are trying to work on a person centred approach and because the dynamics and profile of the patients are everchanging; patients are now more educated and they have their set of expectations. However, this journey towards enforcing person centred care for the patients has not been smooth-sailing. 

Let me ask you a question, when you are old next time and awaiting for a nursing home, would you rather be directly admitted to a nursing home you have not seen and heard before just because you have no choice and no caregiver, so die die you must be admitted. Or would you rather have the opportunity to take a look at the nursing home first, and even if you still have no choice, at least you will be mentally prepared as what to expect of in the nursing home which you are most likely to spend the rest of your life at, call it your second home. So, that's what we are doing for patients awaiting to come to our nursing home. We arrange pre-admission tours to our nursing home and discuss with them any potential issues or concerns they have. However, other service providers and hospitals began to question us. This is because by doing this, there is a risk that patients would refuse to be admitted and as a result we would delay the whole admission process. Yes, we perfectly understand that there is an issue with bed crunch and long waiting lists. However, are we just concerned with discharging patients, and are we so overly obsessed with numbers and hitting KPIs, such that we have forgotten to respect basic human rights? I thought it was good for us to go the extra mile to provide transport and to make the arrangements to allow them to come to the home first, but I was wrong. Although both the patients who came here today for the pre-admission tour are thankful and appreciative, with one saying that he is thankful for being given the opportunity to come and see the home first, and the other being so happy as he talked throughout during the trip in our ambulance, saying that he has not gone out for a long time and he was staring at the scenery as the ambulance goes by, pointing to things he see along the way, it is sad that not all see eye to eye with our practices. We always say we want to ensure a smooth transition of patients from hospitals to nursing homes, and we are doing it well in terms of reducing paperwork, but how often do we consider the psychosocial aspects of care? There is still a long way to go in terms of achieving the standards of care and maintaining dignity in patients. We are incomparable to models of care in countries such as Australia. This is probably why there is a high turnover rate of social workers. We try to advocate for patients, but our ideas get shot down. What we need is more support from others in the same field. 

Whatever it is, my team and I will still stand by the mantra we believe in: Do what you think is correct, even if everyone else opposes to it. 

We have no regrets and we will continue to persevere till the day when there are other like minded individuals like us. I look forward to receiving the two new cases next week!