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A Manual For Emergency Room Social Workers, Jack West

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this manual is to fill the void I encountered when I first began doing emergency room social work. After reading a mass of material on crisis theory, depression, suicide, psychiatric emergencies, etc., after having role played an emergency room crisis counselor, and after reviewing what seemed an infinite number of required hospital procedures, I began work as an emergency room social worker. The first few cases I encountered on my own were bewildering. When emergency room personnel would refer a patient to me with the prefatory remark: "This guy looks like he has real emotional problems. See …