Primary care social work question
Hello everyone!
I would like to get your perspective on how to structure a meeting with a patient in primary care. The reason I asked this is because it is a brand new pilot projecr with a partner organization that i work for and then we are embedded in to a primary care practice. For background, I am a social worker in Canada. And have over 15 years experience. The model just confuses me and I dont see other examples of this in Canadian medicine in my Google searches. I dont know if im on the right track and there is minimal clinical supervision.
How it works- patients with mental health appointments with their doctor will see Social Work for 30 mins prior to dr appointment. Here we can screen for SDOH issues and provide resources or do some very brief counselling or psychoeducation. Then we chart the meeting and the Dr has the notes to refer to prior to their appointment with patient. Before their appointments that day, patients fill out GAD 7 and PHQ 9 and it is in their chart.
I'm struggling with how to structure these appointments with patients. There is no real guidance, so basing it on what would be most effective for patient.
Here are 2 problems-
1- patient isnt choosing to see Social Work, it is just part of their appointment
2- we dont have follow-up appointments we can book freely (no control over schedule) and no caseload or ongoing.
As of right now I just check-in with patients re. Current symptoms (better, worse, the same?). Life stressor, coping, resources, social supports, income, etc etc.) And then pass them along. Sometimes there is room to talk about more clinical tools or psychoeducation, but the patient does not know me, and I dont want them to have to discuss all this difficult historical stuff and then have no follow-up care.
I suppose we have different goals with the clinic wanting to help with Dr availability and our program wanting to support the client more holistically- which im not sure this is happening??
Am I missing something? Is this helpful? I am so curious to get your thoughts. I am nervous about his being on reddit so will most likely delete in a little bit!!