Medical Social Worker’s Subjective Evaluation on the Priorities of Performance Indicators in Taiwan
This study aims to determine the medical social worker’s subjective evaluations on their priorities in accordance with the performance indicators in Taiwan. First, the study gathered 64 performance indicators from medical social workers and the NPO literatures; then four dimensions including organization, internal participants, service and external environments were formulated based on these 64 indicators. The samples of the study were from 63 hospitals with regional level or above and 321 medical workers were participated.
The findings found that five most important indicators are: (1) the manager’s leaderships; (2) maintenance of work moral; (3) the manager’s professional competence; (4) the practitioner’s competence; and (5) the practitioner’s professional commitment. The least important indicators are: (1) the growth of case loading ; (2) case load; (3) the growth of service programs; (4) service program load; and (5) the turnover rate of volunteers. The results of the factor analysis found seven combinations of performance indicators suitable for the social work departments of the hospitals including: (1) personnel and administration; (2) quality of services; (3) management and evaluation systems; (4) loading of services; (5) the interaction with external environments; (6) management of volunteers; and (7) appraise from the externals. Finally, the tests of differences indicated that the department characteristics, including hospital organizational attributes, differential hospital level, the numbers of social workers, case loads, and manpower loads, as well as personal characteristics of social workers such as age, educational background, position, working experiences, and salary, obtained significantly different views on their priorities with the seven combinations of performance indicators.