LCSW jobs threatened by Nurses?

[InfoNerd101]

Social workers, do you often feel your jobs are becoming threatened and/or replaced by psychiatric or community health nurses?

The more I see from working in the hospital, it seems that RN's are taking over case management roles, advocacy and typical social work roles.

The only thing that seems to be able to separate RN's from social workers now is if you are an LCSW, they have the ability to provide psychotherapy whereas a nurse does not.

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[InfoNerd101]

anyone?

 

[wesleysmith]

Yes (in hospitals) and no (in every other imaginable setting). In my area, RNs are taking over discharge/"case-management" work in the hospital setting to an extent, but the LCSWs are still gainfully employed in these same organizations, just as "therapists" (per their ID badges) focusing on assessment and crisis intervention work (at least in the ER, I know they have LCSWs working in other areas as well, not sure in what capacity). From what I hear through the grapevine - once again, in my area - medical social work is dying off a bit since they can have nurses perform these tasks. So, if your goal is to do discharge work at a hospital around my neck of the woods, yes, they are creating competition for this role. Still plenty of case management positions left to go around for the LCSWs though, and there will be for a very long time... just maybe not as much in the hospital setting as there use to be.

 

[Goobernut]

Short answer? Nope.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I've worked in probably a half-dozen hospitals, so it's a small N, but I haven't seen this being the case. The slightly exception would be organ transplant teams, where the patient coordinator is often an RN. However, even then, the team typically also has a social worker for more of the "prototypical" case management-type work.