The Role of Spirituality in Medical Social Work

Incorporating spiritually-involved interventions into the treatment process for chronically ill patients is a trending subject in the field of medical social work. Literature suggests the integration of spirituality with patients diagnosed with a chronic medical illness appear to influence patient’s resiliency level. However, the lack of information and knowledge on the topic suggests medical social workers are still in the process of learning how to utilize spirituality as a form of intervention. This study explores how medical social workers in the Inland Empire perceive the practice of spirituality on resilience levels in adults diagnosed with a chronic medical illness. The data is collected through audio recordings from individual interviews with each participant. The audio recordings are transcribed into transcripts to identify themes and common categories among the participants. The results analyzed call for future research to continue on how to incorporate spirituality into the social work practice in the Inland Empire.