AbstractsSocial Work

Medical Social Statistics: An Index To The Concept Of Function In Medical Social Work.

by Edith Lewis. Clement




Institution: McGill University
Department: School of Social Work.
Degree: MA.
Year: 1949
Keywords: Social Work.
Record ID: 1542801
Full text PDF: http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/thesisfile123823.pdf


Abstract

This study in the area of medical social statistics was begun in 1945 when the writer was engaged as a student worker on a fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, in the Social Service Department. It seemed appropriate at that time to undertake some evaluation of the new scheme in medical social statistics which had been inaugurated at that hospital in January of that year. In the course of enquiring into the background of this new plan, the writer found it both necessary and intensely interesting to examine the reports of the department’s work from its beginning in 1905. Special attention was given to the forms of medical social statistical reporting which were developed throughout the years and it soon became evident that running through each of these was the thread of an evolving purpose. That is, that as the function of medical social workers became more clearly defined, the method of statistical reporting changed in accordance with it . With this theory in mind, the writer determined to test it on a broader scale. On returning to Canada in 1946, further consideration of this problem convinced the writer that there was sufficient evidence in the material already assembled to warrant further exploration and development of the emerging theme.[...]