August Seminars

BRIDGING THE SOCIAL GAP IN GHANAIAN HOSPITALS: HOSPITAL SOCIAL WORK AS A PILLAR IN INTERPROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION TO PATIENT WELLBEING

Presenter: Franklin Abeiku Siaw Benyin (MPhil)

Abstract:

Within Ghana’s hospital systems, patient wellbeing is not solely contingent upon biomedical interventions. Rather, it emerges from the confluence of physical, psychological, emotional, legal, and social care dimensions that demand truly multidisciplinary responses. Hospital social workers, as trained professionals embedded within hospital environments, are positioned to integrate these dimensions. Yet, in many Ghanaian hospitals, their contributions to patient care remain undervalued, structurally marginalized, and poorly integrated into institutional frameworks. This study addresses this systemic gap by situating hospital social work practice within the broader multidisciplinary architecture of healthcare delivery in Ghana.

Employing an ethnographic research design at the KNUST Hospital, this study draws on in-depth interviews, participant observation, and focus group discussions with 22 stakeholders, comprising hospital social workers, medical doctors, ward-in-charges, and police officers. Guided by Social Network Theory and the Biopsychosocial Model, the research explores the social work unit within the healthcare environment, how hospital social workers utilize informal collaborations to respond to complex patient cases, particularly those involving domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and mental health crises that intersect with the criminal justice system.

Findings reveal that hospital social workers are indispensable actors in facilitating comprehensive, patient-centered care. They conduct psychosocial assessments, advocate for patients’ rights, mediate between families and healthcare teams, coordinate discharge plans, and connect patients with external support systems. In cases involving both health and legal dimensions, they serve as a link between frontline health professionals and criminal justice actors. Despite these critical roles, hospital social work units often operate from poorly resourced, physically isolated offices, with minimal institutional authority or formal inclusion in multidisciplinary care planning. Interprofessional collaboration, when it occurs, is sustained less by formal policy and more by interpersonal trust, role clarity, shared ethical commitments, and culturally embedded informal norms. Hospital social workers contribute to the relational infrastructure that makes this collaboration possible, often negotiating care decisions that extend beyond clinical protocols to include family expectations, cultural beliefs, and justice concerns. These collaborative practices, though informal and ad hoc, are essential to filling structural gaps and preventing ethical lapses in patient care, especially in high-risk, socially sensitive cases.

The study argues that for Ghana’s health system to become stronger, more equitable, and more responsive to the holistic needs of patients, hospital social work must be fully integrated into multidisciplinary care frameworks and teams. This calls for institutional reform, legislative recognition, resource allocation, and the development of locally grounded models of collaboration that move beyond biomedical dominance. Furthermore, the findings challenge the over-reliance on Western models in social work education in Ghana, advocating for curricula that reflect the lived realities of Ghanaian hospital practice, including the role of family norms, criminal-health intersections, and informal systems of care.