Needs, rights-based approach and self-determination: current bases for social work and its visibility in a private hospital

Abstract

The intention of this paper to describe the foundations of social work in the context of a private hospital. In this space, social work is integrated within a multidisciplinary team that identifies factors, living conditions and social needs that affect the process of health/disease/care. Of the central tenets of this practice, three will be approached, as the person/patient: a) has needs that, although common to all, are resolved in a singular and unique manner, according to his/her characteristics; b) has rights that needs to be exercised and restored; and c) has a power, either as individual or collective subjects, from which to act on his/her circumstances, and this gives an autonomy that social work seeks to promote. The social worker participates in the institutional responsibility for the assessment and allocation of resources, contributing to the sustainability of the system through the rationality of care. In this process, there might be areas of interests, co-existence of rights and obligations, benefits, constraints and contradictions over which the best possible decisions should be attempted. Training of social workers, aimed at complex and disruptive situations as a field of operation, provides specific tools for critical situations in which the social aspect, as frame of life conditions and existence is a key element in the genesis of problems and solutions