Social Work and Advocacy?

[mdfirst]

Which medical specialties involves the most amount of social work and patient advocacy? I was thinking maybe PMR...
any other suggestions??

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[ensuii]

I honestly have no idea (even though I'm very interested in pursuing these types of projects once I start practicing) but I would imagine family med/emergency would be up there....

 

[Janovec]

General Internal Medicine. It is all you will do.

 

[Droopy Snoopy]

General Internal Medicine. It is all you will do.

IM (general sure but also critical care), FM, and PrevMed/Public Health come to mind. Although we all advocate for our patients in some way, EM is generally a treat and street specialty.

Really though it's not a good use of a physician's skills or resources sitting around trying to arrange for anti-skid bathroom flooring or whatever. It's better to stick to what you were trained for and let actual social workers and your support staff do what they were trained for.

 

[ZagDoc]

Psychiatry.

 

[agranulocytosis]

Psychiatry.

My thoughts exactly as well. It's all you do in psych.

 

[GH253]

My thoughts exactly as well. It's all you do in psych.

Well, that and prescribe any number of mind-altering drugs for made up diseases that don't exist

 

[Droopy Snoopy]

Well, that and prescribe any number of mind-altering drugs for made up diseases that don't exist

Everybody's entitiled to an opinion I guess.

Want to major in philosophy, but also want to major in something that covers the med school prerequisites so I can kill all my birds with one stone.

Maybe yours will carry more weight on the other side of those prereqs...

 

[GH253]

Everybody's entitiled to an opinion I guess.
Maybe yours will carry more weight on the other side of those prereqs...

Right, because formal schooling is man's only means of acquiring knowledge. If a university professor didn't say so, it's not true. Credentials are more important than arguments. What's important in life is to accept what your authorities tell you and not rock the boat by saying something that goes against the grain. And if that doesn't bring you intellectual fulfillment, just take meds to block it all out.

 

[username456789]

Right, because formal schooling is man's only means of acquiring knowledge. If a university professor didn't say so, it's not true. Credentials are more important than arguments. What's important in life is to accept what your authorities tell you and not rock the boat by saying something that goes against the grain. And if that doesn't bring you intellectual fulfillment, just take meds to block it all out.

I'm sure there's a specific psychological term to describe your knee-jerk overly-defensive reply.

 

[ZagDoc]

Well, that and prescribe any number of mind-altering drugs for made up diseases that don't exist

Now, I'm not going into psychiatry, and frankly could give to flips of your opinion, but it drips of ignorance.

Try reading up on a lot of the psych basic science research that has been going on the past 10 years or so. There are physiologic changes that occur in the brain during mental illness that can be seen on fMRI which are statistically significantly different from normal physiology and statistically significantly similar to each other. Mental illnesses have been reproduced with knock-out mice. Atrophy of specific cortical areas can been seen on autopsy associated with specific mental illnesses. Mental illnesses are very much real diseases producing real biologic changes in the patients that suffer from them.

 

[GH253]

.

 

[GH253]

Now, I'm not going into psychiatry, and frankly could give to flips of your opinion, but it drips of ignorance.

Try reading up on a lot of the psych basic science research that has been going on the past 10 years or so. There are physiologic changes that occur in the brain during mental illness that can be seen on fMRI which are statistically significantly different from normal physiology and statistically significantly similar to each other. Mental illnesses have been reproduced with knock-out mice. Atrophy of specific cortical areas can been seen on autopsy associated with specific mental illnesses. Mental illnesses are very much real diseases producing real biologic changes in the patients that suffer from them.

You're begging the question. Is mental illness caused be an abnormal physiological state, or is an abnormal physiolgical state the result of having an abnormal experience of life? Is depression caused by low serotonin levels, or are low serotonin levels the result of an unfulfilling existence? Or does depression even have anything to do with serotonin at all?

Furthermore, you can't cover all of mental illness in one statement. Few people would debate the existence of schizophrenia as a real illness, but others such as "ADHD" are far more dubious. So simply insisting that mental illness is real is fail argument.

 

[username456789]

So simply insisting that mental illness is real is fail argument.

And you've just outed yourself as a 13 year old boy. Tough to take anything you say very seriously.

 

[username456789]

Also, your whole diatribe smacks of "I just took high school level psych guys, and I'm here to strut my stuff."

 

[GH253]

I'm sure there's a specific psychological term to describe your knee-jerk overly-defensive reply.

There's a specific psychological term to describe the level of intelligence reflected in all three of your posts: "profoundly ******ed."

 

[username456789]

There's a specific psychological term to describe the level of intelligence reflected in all three of your posts: "profoundly ******ed."

Swing and a miss.



Go ahead, dig yourself deeper.

 

[username456789]

i can hit you over the head with it, then use it to bury you

Adding a smiley face doesn't make your psychopathic message any less creepy.

 

[GH253]

Adding a smiley face doesn't make your psychopathic message any less creepy.

Adding a shovel doesn't make your head any less buried in the sand.

 

[username456789]

Adding a shovel doesn't make your head any less buried in the sand.

I appreciate your effort in taking several hours to come up with that unoriginal retort, but we've really derailed this thread, and I'd hate to think that the OP's thread would get closed simply because some kid with an anti-psychotropic agenda had to air his grievances (Festivus is still months away).

So in the spirit of you not embarrassing yourself any more than you've already done, let's leave this thread to people who are answering the OP's question.

 

[GH253]

A wise admission of defeat on your part. I accept your surrender.

 

[JustSomePreMed]

A wise admission of defeat on your part. I accept your surrender.

Are you 6? Seriously I have no idea why you two are arguing, but you specifically are terrible at presenting yourself as anything but a little kid.

If your goal was to "win an argument on the internet" (which is stupid in the first place), you failed. Miserably.

 

[pingouin]

Aaaand, losing the bickering and getting this thread back on track...

Advocacy (which, fyi, is not synonymous with social work but is certainly a part of it) will most often play a role in working with patient populations who are marginalized in some way: specific age groups, stigmatized diseases, socioeconomic statuses, etc.

So yes, I would agree that you might see more advocacy-related opportunities in the primary care specialties (FM, IM, peds), psychiatry, and even infectious diseases (HIV advocacy, anyone?). It may be a very helpful skill to have for a geriatrician as our population ages and needs more resources, and I also know of an adolescent medicine specialist who does a lot of advocacy for that population.

By the way, just a reminder that although in academic settings it's easy to say "have the social worker take care of (A), (B), and (C)", most private practices do not hire social workers. If you're not planning on staying in academia, I'd suggest you pay attention to at least some of the scut y'all think of as "social work" (most of which is not actually "social work" although that's a completely different discussion) because there's a fair chance you're going to have to do some of it yourself one day.

 

[BigRedBeta]

Which medical specialties involves the most amount of social work and patient advocacy? I was thinking maybe PMR...
any other suggestions??

Pediatrics. There's lots of options available.

Child abuse pediatrics is a newly created subspecialty which is pretty much nothing but advocacy.

Peds also has a lot of options for legislative advocacy given children being a population which needs people to speak on their behalf...