Social Work Supervisor Danielle Leone, MSW, LCSW, discusses the changes in her role as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic – she and her colleagues have become social workers for not only patients, but the entire hospital.
Members of the Community Medical Center team in Toms River have been tirelessly caring for patients, and one another, as they respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Throughout it all, they have responded with strength, skill, and compassion, and shown who they truly are – heroes.
Transcription
I think, in regards to social work, we’ve been dealing a lot with patients, family members who can’t come to visit. There’s people who are extremely ill here in the hospital who don’t have anyone. No one to sit by them, no one to hold their hand – they are Facetiming family members as much as possible, but when your loved one is coding and not doing well, you want to be there. So that really has been a challenge that we are all having a hard time dealing with.
We’re using each other – we have a really good support team within our department. We talk to each other, we’re talking with the nurses. Here, in the hospital, our social workers primarily work with their patients. During this pandemic, we’ve been working not only with our patients, but the nurses, the physicians. Everyone’s coming to us for that extra support, so we’ve been social workers for the whole hospital – employees, patients, everyone.