Social Worker Palliative Care

Join Our Team

Samaritan is a not-for-profit healthcare provider of life-enhancing care that includes primary care at home, palliative medicine, hospice care, and grief support. We are proud to be here for people, not for profit.

In return for your expertise, you'll enjoy excellent training, generous paid time off, and industry-leading benefits. Be a part of our great team! Apply today!

• Highly competitive salary.
• Generous paid time off.
• Excellent benefits package, supplemented with concierge services, including but not limited to vision, dental, life insurance, Employee Assistance Program, Flexible Spending Account, travel reimbursement, tuition reimbursement, multiple discount programs.
• Opportunity to work from home.
• Career opportunities, promotional opportunities and work schedule flexibility.
• Holidays.
• 403 (b) and employer match.
• Annual employee milestone awards ceremony and recognition activities including peer recognition, and annual department celebrations.
• Samaritan is committed to inclusion, diversity, & access through board and staff committees and according to our employee surveys, employees are highly engaged, rate our management team as highly effective, and embrace our welcoming culture as demonstrated by the number of tenured employees.
• Training and professional development opportunities.
• Employee referral bonuses.
• Performance reviews, merit raises, and bonus opportunities.

Not-for-Profit Provider

Our compassionate healthcare experts provide many options for people living with chronic or serious illness:

• primary care,
• supportive palliative medical care,
• hospice care,
• grief support,
• and two inpatient hospice centers.

Samaritan helps patients and their families live their best life every day and has been proudly serving the South Jersey community since 1980. 

Position Summary:

Responsible for providing individualized, person-centered psychosocial assessment, advance care planning and ongoing emotional support for individuals with serious illnesses and their families.  The palliative care social worker helps to ensure continuity of care and a medical care plan that aligns with the patient and family goals of care. 

Job Responsibilities for a Social Worker includes:

Essential Functions

1. Complete psychosocial assessments with focus on patient and family level of coping with serious illness
2. Develop and implement a plan of care to optimize psychosocial functioning of patients and families, addressing social determinants of health, to ensure continuity of care.
3. Conduct home visits and visits to patients in health care facilities. 
4. Implement intervention strategies and referrals to appropriate community resources.
5. Work collaboratively with interdisciplinary palliative care team to provide supportive care to patients with serious illnesses and their families.
6. Provide ongoing emotional support, counseling and psychoeducation to patients and families to ease stress, expedite decision making, help surmount obstacles and barriers that impede accessing appropriate health care and/or community services.
7. Effectively communicate and coordinate with members of other medical teams caring for palliative care patients in order to ensure continuity of care.
8. Facilitate discharge planning as appropriate.
9. Assist with goal setting and advanced care planning and help facilitate completion of advance directive documents when appropriate, collaborating with palliative care team.
10. Facilitate and co-facilitate family meetings to identify and address goals of care.
11. Provide crisis intervention and supportive services to patients and families in situations such as domestic, child or elder abuse, death and dying issues, etc.
12. Maintain accurate and up-to-date resource information and foster strong working relationships with organizations providing resources needed by patients and families.
13. Document in electronic medical record in a timely manner.
14. Serve as liaison between outpatient and inpatient palliative care teams, discharge planning, and social service departments.
15. Serve as liaison between palliative care team and home care agencies, long-term care facilities, other community services and Samaritan’s hospice staff.

• Plan, facilitate, and participate in palliative care educational programs for interdisciplinary staff in a range of healthcare settings.
• Attends interdisciplinary team meetings and meetings for the operational functions of the program.
• Participates in palliative care quality improvement initiatives
• Other duties as assigned to support the palliative care program and Samaritan.