Envisioning Quality Psychosocial Care in Nursing Homes: The Role of Social Work

This article articulates a vision of excellent psychosocial care in nursing homes using a quality assurance perspective and illustrates how skills of professional social workers can contribute to enhanced psychosocial care in this setting. Building on knowledge of actual and best practice roles for social work in nursing homes, this article serves as a call to differentiate professional social work from paraprofessional social services to support quality improvements for interprofessional psychosocial care and improved quality of life outcomes for residents.