This textbook on palliative social work is a companion volume to the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine and the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Nursing. To that end, this chapter will accomplish the following:
♦Palliative social workers have an important role to play in identifying strengths and positive outcomes in patients and family members.
♦Practicing palliative social work with a strengths perspective acknowledges that, along with negatives, positive changes can take place for patients, families, and for professionals.
♦Of the various models that focus on positive aspects of the negative situations, the strengths perspective and posttraumatic growth are the most applicable in palliative care.
♦Posttraumatic growth includes the five domains of: new possibilities, relating to others, personal strength, appreciation of life, and spiritual change.
♦Strengths and growth can emerge at any time along the illness continuum.
♦Social workers are encouraged to be open to strengths as little is known about facilitating positive aspects.
♦Positive aspects of stressful life circumstances do not replace the negative aspects: positive and negative states coexist.