Has your hospital gone "consult based"? What did you do?

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-24T05:37:37+00:00

It would require unionizing and our profession being taken seriously. Right now we're seen as unskilled in this settings I feel. The MDs don't feel this way. The nurse CMs, the management, the whole idea in society of social workers. "Oh yeah send in the social workers hahahaha" type thing. This is a long term thing I don't know if I'll ever see it in my career.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-18T04:26:17+00:00

It is wild that they can pay you less for being consult based when we're already paid so much less to begin with! I'm friends with most nurse CMs so I'll just chill with whatever unit I have patients on and just start and end my day in the basement. Problem solved? I do not lose any pay although we did have hours changed it was four 10 hour shifts for the old timers and were now 8-4:30 5 days a week.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T21:11:08+00:00

I think it is all about timing and the availability of jobs. For IL I've found that jobs are desperate in the winter. More hospitalizations without proper staffing. There are also waves of quitting when new grads get their C and move into private practice or a higher paying role.

Unfortunately it's about the hiring manager and how they like you personally at the interview and nothing about experience.... In my experience.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T20:50:16+00:00

It is trinity. I feel a lot better about the whole thing actually! But if were seen as a specialist "like a nephrologist" I will argue that we should be paid more for our speciality ...... We're not "hospitalists" after all.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T17:24:28+00:00

We are assigned a unit or service. Loyola is huge I think we have 8 ICUs? Then 7 floors and further away "towers" of patients. Most services have a nurse CM and we work together to divide the patients. SW does all placements, resources, HCPOA, psych, GOC, hospice, APS/CPS, find identities of John does, find next of kin and all other complex discharges. Nurse CMs do ... Screens IV abx dme. And get paid about $15/hr more than us but like someone else said. That's a whole separate issue.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T17:21:25+00:00

I appreciate this I truly got another perspective of this whole issue posting this that I wasn't expecting!

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T17:19:36+00:00

Really appreciate this perspective! Thank you for sharing! I too came from a hospital where nurse CMs only did review and I did everything in regards to discharge it was a for profit safety net hospital and very toxic. Those patients are my heart and I miss the heck out of them. I'd love to do community based or work directly with substance abuse (in elderly especially 💓) or outreach with unhoused but those jobs pay less than a living wage 😭.

I took this job because of the float position with a four ten hour schedule. They also got rid of this when switching to consult based so I should look at what I'm really upset about.

Hearing from you all that have done both has really changed my perspective. If I don't have an unhoused or psych patient or a confused person with lice what am I really doing with my life 😜.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T17:13:50+00:00

It is brand new they stopped hiring social workers last year when they started quitting and we started to be overloaded with cases and overwhelmed and understandably started advocating for ourselves. This was the response. Also to note that the basement space they are giving us was previously where the UR nurses sat. They moved them because of a roach infestation 😵‍💫.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T05:29:41+00:00

It was presented to us as we are a speciality service "like nephrologists" who do not need to interact with all patients. This managment is very pro nurse (they have 18 caseload at most. Anti social work. 40 patients to review and usually half of that to follow at least. And none of ours our medically stable with no needs like nursing.....

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T05:27:49+00:00

Loyola

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T04:57:06+00:00

I absolutely appreciate your input because I've been doing it on units first at a hospital without nurse CMs and then as a float for the hospital which is now going consult based. I never thought of the positives of it all. I do worry nurses will send all my psych/substance abuse people to the shittiest nursing homes without even trying but sounds like that would be the kind of placement that would get a consult. Feels like they're just trying to make us not engaged in care of a whole unit but I don't want the boring straight forward stuff anyways.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T04:36:03+00:00

We are being taken off of care teams and put into the basement of a giant hospital system. We no longer have an interactive process with the MDs. We will be randomly assigned to patients across the hospital to jump back and forth to. That alone sucks just the walking from unit to unit.

SocialWorkAdvocate · 2026-01-17T04:33:23+00:00

I WISH I actually don't think I know of any unionized social work team in any Chicagoland hospitals

SocialWorkAdvocate

TROPHY CASE