Goals, Values, and Priorities of Hospitalized Patients: Using a Structured Communication Tool to Engage Medical Students in Serious Illness Communication.

To build third-year medical students' serious illness communication skills, we implemented a structured communication tool-the VALUES tool-focused on patients' goals, values, and priorities and described students' experiences using this tool. Medical students participated in a social worker-led VALUES didactic and discussion with a patient on the palliative care consult service and, subsequently, completed an anonymous survey about their comfort with the VALUES tool and its usefulness for learning (5-point Likert scales). Of the 142 medical students who participated in the VALUES didactic, 37 completed the survey (26%).

Expanding the Palliative Care Workforce during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Evaluation of Core Palliative Care Skills in Health Social Workers.

Meeting the needs of seriously ill SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) patients requires novel models of deploying health social workers (SWs) to expand the palliative care workforce. To inform such expansion, understanding the current state of health SWs' core palliative care skills is necessary. Following minimal training, health SWs in one New York City hospital were surveyed about their frequency, competence, and confidence in using core palliative care skills.

In the Global Epicenter: Social Work Leadership in a New York City Hospital.

The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City was in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic and had to transform from a tertiary to crisis care hospital and increase its bed capacity by 50 percent to care for COVID-19 patients. The size, scope, complexity and uncertainty of this crisis was unparalleled. This article describes the comprehensive response of the Department of Social Work Services, one of the largest hospital social work departments in the country.