Psychosocial Issues in Palliative Care Tasks for Social Workers

Despite all scientifically and interdisciplinar approaches, death and dying conserved an old taboo status. In many socio-medical and psychological Romanian’s discussion, we still used to avoid or delay such themes. And still, the needs of dying persons and the needs of the family and care givers remain huge and unfulfilled. Aren’t in fact these needs our own needs? And are we really prepared to cope with them? The article outlines these requirements and underlines the holistic idea as the single proper approach in such debate. In a further discussion about the hospice philosophy, the paper presents the social work tasks in this type of caring and a brief history of hospice in Romania. The conclusions summarize the hospice benefits and launch into discussion the care giving for dying status, hospice’s limitations, an old and still new research idea and our social attitude regarding the debate.

Keywords: dying, palliative care, social work, hospice