DECISION-MAKING SITUATIONS IN HEALTH-CARE

Social workers in health care settings are constantly required to make clinical decisions about patient care and treatment. Although much attention has been devoted to the normative or ethical aspects of decision making in such settings, little attention has been given to the typical situational aspects of decisions social workers must make in health care. This article discusses four types of clinical decision situations-operational, strategic, authoritative, and crisis-and presents a model to assist in analyzing their components and requirements. Case vignettes drawn From practice experience illustrate each type of decision-making situation. The article concludes that knowledge of the situational aspects of practice decision making can be helpful to practitioners by enabling them to sort out courses of action and intervention.