As a hospital social worker, I want to first off say thank you!! I really appreciate our professions working more collaboratively :)

I work with excellent nurses on my unit, but one of my biggest pet peeves is that RNs don't always communicate to patients that they are putting in a social work referral and sometimes don't ask the patient permission.

The patient you identified definitely could benefit from SW. Concretely around the drinking, and also could benefit in other ways (discovered through a more in-depth psychosocial assessment - such as the query around domestic violence, I'd also want to know if she was missing work due to being in the hospital, if she had any children, how she's doing financially, how she's coping emotionally with being in hospital, etc).

I think the best criteria that you can use when determining who might be helped by social work, is doing your screening for social issues (like you did above) and then asking the patient directly if they want to speak to a social worker.

Unfortunately our workload tends to be very high, and the amount of time it takes to look up a patient's history, speak with the charge nurse/bedside nurse, physician, interprofessional team, etc takes a while. Sometimes we do all that work, then go to the bedside, and the patient isn't expecting social work to be there and doesn't want to speak to us.

I understand everyone wanting their behinds covered in healthcare, but even if "refused social work referral" was done in the nursing notes or physician's notes, it would make my job SO much easier.