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New Social Worker Way More Social Than She is a Worker

Dr. 99
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77
New Social Worker Way More Social Than She is a Worker

NEW YORK, NY – It hasn’t taken long for health care providers at Mount Sinai Hospital to realize that Amanda Johnson, a new social worker hired just last month, is way more social than she is a worker.  Many of her colleagues believe this might be the understatement of the year.

“Don’t get me wrong, she’s very, very nice,” said physician assistant Jim Firestone, biting his tongue, which is now bleeding and falling off.  “But all she does is gossip, gossip, gossip.  Nothing ever gets done.  Literally nothing.”

According to sources close to GomerBlog, Johnson has yet to successfully facilitate a discharge home or to a post-acute care facility such as a nursing home, rehabilitation (acute or subacute), long-term acute care, psychiatric facility, or inpatient hospice.

As one anonymous co-worker put it, “She has been impressively unimpressive.”

“She’s really up to date on the Kardashians, the Bachelorette, stuff like that,” said nurse Kathryn Roberts, her five patients still awaiting nursing home placement.  “But these patients are going nowhere fast.  She knows she’s supposed to do some work, right?”

In four weeks, Johnson’s accomplishments can be listed on zero hands.  In fact, a patient discharged last week is still waiting for a cab voucher home.

“Boy oh boy, I’m so tired,” said Johnson as she let out a monstrous yawn while checking her email both online and on her phone.  When our GomerBlog team asked her how she thought she was performing, Johnson was quick to respond.  “I don’t know about me, but what I can tell you is that Mike the tech was checking out one of the nurses on the second floor even though his girlfriend is pregnant.  Can you believe it?  What a pig!”

Director of Social Services at Mount Sinai Steven Rush is looking into matters.  (Regarding Johnson, not that pig Mike.)

“Once I asked her how she was doing and she proceeded to hand me her patient list as she walked away and took a nice long lunch,” said Rush, realizing that he might have made a big mistake.  “She did say she had a great pizza lunch in New Haven.  Wait, she’s all the way in New Haven?  Damn it, Amanda!  You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Until Johnson becomes more productive or another new social worker is hired, Mount Sinai will remain on permanent diversion.

77 COMMENTS

  5. Could have been funnier actually. I am a social worker with 29 yrs in discharge planning and I love satire. Thanks to everyone who appreciates all that social workers do. Every. Day.

  13. Financial/insurance matters? Meh, I don’t do much of that. Maybe give people resources on where to apply. My hospital has financial workers for that. I assess people with suicidal and homicidal ideation, psychosis, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. Provide crisis interventions, counseling and referrals. Grief and loss, family conflict, you name it. Drug and ETOH, yup. We are clinical professionals. I agree we should not be taking telephone orders for RNs, never saw that happen even once. Sure that person was out of line. RNs obviously are front line with patients and provide lots of comfort and support, but they are not trained in the things we are trained in either! Just saying.

  14. You gotta admit barb that that sw im talking about was way out of line and believe you me i turf cog evals, and financial/insurance matters to sw all day long i want no part of that

  16. I hear what you are saying. We have RNs who wear purple scrubs, which happen to be the same color as the gowns in which we place our patients on psych holds. ;) So that can make for some mix ups. As far as PTs having Doctoral degrees, that is great. Most of the ones I know have Master’s degrees. In the profession of clinical social work the MSW is considered the “terminal practice degree” which means that we can be licensed independent clinical professionals. Getting a DSW or PhD is specifically if the SW wants to go into research and academia. So there’s that!

  17. Couple things: one of the biggest reasons I’d prefer they didn’t wear whitecoats is I see a lot of patients with dementia who see whitecoats and get further confused because they’re in new place and no one, despite all the white coats, seems to be “their doctor”. Secondly, most PTs have a clinical doctorate and are granted whitecoats because of that. I would know because I am a DPT. I don’t wear a whitecoat because it’s impractical for transfers and the patient’s orientation to staff and facility is more important than any injury to my pride.

  20. Really? How superficial can it get!? If that is actually something that is bothersome to you, I would suggest refocusing some of that energy towards pt care and not a stupid lab coat.

  24. I would as well as it sounds like you are very familiar with the profession of clinical social work. I would love to relay them to the countless patients I have seen for years in psychotherapy. I would also wonder if you want to relay the facts to the families I counsel every single day in the ICU when MDs consult with my team to have the discussions they “don’t have time for ” or consider not to be within their scope of practice. I’m always fascinated with people who speak with such authority on topics they clearly have no idea what what they are saying.

  25. I have also been a licensed clinical social worker since before you entered medical school. And unless your specialty is psychiatry (looks like it is family medicine) I am pretty sure you know jack about mental health. How much training did you get? A couple of classes and a psychiatry rotation? You work at an urgent care? I work in the ED, and I work as a partner with my ED physicians. We work as a team, but every psychiatric patient is assessed by us.

  29. You can deny facts all you want, Barbara. Facts are stubborn things. They remain true whether YOU like them or not. Social workers know enough behavioral science to be dangerous, at best. That’s it.

  30. That’s hilarious, Justin. Actually I have years of training in assessing, diagnosing and treating mental health disorders. Many MSWs and DSWs do research actually, not sure why you would think otherwise. And it looks like you are trained as a physician? So how would you know what clinical social work training comprises?

  31. In some hospitals they want clinical social workers to wear white coats. In my hospital we are expected to dress professionally, as would a physician, as we are also advanced professionals. I don’t wear a white coat, but I know some old school folks that do. Fine by me.

  34. I expect better from GomerBlog. I am a clinical social worker in an Emergency Department, and we do quite a lot, including psychiatric assessments and crisis intervention counseling. Our colleagues on the “floors” may do more discharge planning but they too are clinically trained and work hard with some of the most challenging patients. I have a sense of humor, don’t worry. But I think there is a funnier satire to be written here. It would be interesting if you looked at how medical and nursing staff often try to get social workers to do menial tasks, or refer cases to them inappropriately. I could go on. I think it would be funny if social workers did not already feel undervalued in hospital settings. We do have graduate degrees, after all!

  35. Sorry Barbara, but you don’t know what you don’t know. The FACT is that social workers have little to no psychology training, despite what you all claim. In any case, you don’t have nearly half enough to be licensed to do any clinical behavioral science, or even to do research. The reason you are able to be licensed to, is a testament to special interest lobbying power.

  36. We are trained and licensed similarly to psychologists. The main things psychologists are trained in that isn’t as much in the clinical social work domain is psychometric testing.

  40. I feel like this can’t be real…not because it couldn’t happen, but who would do research only to write such a stupid blog.

    As far as social workers being social. I talk about unrelated stuff at work too. I deal with backgrounds of kids that most people would put their fingers in their ears and sing lalalalalalalala if they had to listen to it. We have to have our moments of release with the things we see everyday.

    But still, the writer of that must of had a slow day to feel the need to try to make social workers look bad with a poorly written story. :) just my thought

  52. Wow this is hysterical. Almost as hilarious as the arrogant, elitist person who wrote this. I suppose the white coat is really inappropriate when performing such trivial tasks as an unworthy social worker. And boy are they overpayed. I really hope we aren’t getting in the way of providing the counseling, resources for housing, healthcare and

  58. Social workers are annoying. They wear doctor’s white coats inappropriately more than any other profession. They think they’re psychologists. They try to encroach on every other profession’s scope of practice, without any education in said scopes. Yet they militantly protect their scope and professional title from encroachment by anyone. SMH

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