Handbook of Health Social Work
Chapter One
The Conceptual Underpinnings of
Social Work in Health Care
SARAH GEHLERT
The writing of this text coincides with the centennial of the hiring of the first
medical social worker in the United States, Garnet Pelton, who began working
at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1905. It seems an appropriate time
to consider the history of social work in health care and to assess the degree to
which the vision of its founders has been met in its first 100 years. Ida Cannon
(1952), the second social worker hired at Massachusetts General Hospital, whose
tenure lasted for 40 years, wrote, "basically, social work, wherever and whenever
practiced at its best, is a constantly changing activity, gradually building up guiding
principles from accumulated knowledge yet changing in techniques. Attitudes
change, too, in response to shifting social philosophies" (p. 9). How, if at all, have
the guiding principles of social work in health care changed over the century?
This chapter focuses on the dev ... read full excerpt from Handbook of Health Social Work ebook
