The advocacy role in hospital social work

Hospital social workers were asked to describe their roles and functions, with particular emphasis on the amount of time spent doing traditional advocacy on behalf of patients. The results indicated that workers spent the least amount of time on advocacy as compared with other traditional social work roles. A case is made for emphasizing the advocacy role as a strategy to counteract the potentially negative effects on social work of organizational changes in Canadian hospitals. The implications of the findings for schools of social work, professional associations and employers of social workers are discussed.