The multi-directional emotional and connective labor of hospital-based social workers

• In Event: Medical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 17. Healthcare Providers & Practice I

Abstract

Hospital-based social workers (SWs) are understudied members of interdisciplinary care teams in hospitals. This project uses the lens of connective labor (Pugh 2023) to better understand hospital-based SWs. As the psychosocial experts of the care team, hospital-based SWs use connective labor in all aspects of the care they provide. This often has an impact on how they engage in caring work and in their caring life outside of work.
42 semi-structured interviews with hospital based social workers in one state were conducted between August 2024 and September 2025. All interviews are coded using a thematic analysis approach (Saldana 2021). Participants mostly worked in patient-facing roles (71.4%) with 8 in staff-facing and 4 in family- and caregiver-facing roles. Twenty-six work in the hospital, 13 work in outpatient clinics run by the hospital, and 2 work in hospital run school-based programs
This research theorizes that the connective labor of hospital-based SWs is multi-directional in three distinct directions: lateral (with colleagues), horizontal (with patients), and diagonal (with family and caregivers). This can be in conflict with the emotional and connective labor needed in the hospital-based SWs caring life – where they care for themselves and loved ones. This research adds hospital-based SWs into the literature on the growing connective labor literature on care workers. It also expands the idea of connective labor to consider the multi-directional work of experts in psychosocial factors of care.

Author

• Bonnie J Siry-Bove, University at Albany, SUNY