Social Work Training in Palliative Care: Addressing the Gap

As people live longer with chronic disease and serious illness in the U.S., palliative care teams are called upon to support patients and their families. Social workers are an integral part of the palliative care interprofessional team, and yet there are disproportionately few training programs for social workers who wish to specialize in this area. The curriculum of a post-graduate palliative care training program for social workers should be based on the current standards for palliative care and social work, as described by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), Council for Social Work Education (CSWE) and the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC). Trainees should develop skills to care for patients who have chronic or life-limiting illness, patients who are nearing their end of life, patients who are in the active dying phase and their families around end of life planning, medical decision making, grief and bereavement. A post-graduate social work training program that aims to prepare social workers to work in the field of palliative care should consist of clinical rotations at multiple sites, robust didactic curriculum and clinical supervision. Interprofessional learning is necessary and training should include opportunities for scholarly work, quality improvement activities, leadership, and teaching. Post-graduate training programs in palliative care will prepare future social workers to be experts in a sub-specialty skill set to meet the needs of people living with chronic disease. These needs and opportunities call on the social work profession to take action to develop post-graduate training programs in palliative care.