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Hospice social worker skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted experts

Matt Grace,

Dr. Dianna Cooper

Below we've compiled a list of the most critical hospice social worker skills. We ranked the top skills for hospice social workers based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 29.5% of hospice social worker resumes contained social work as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a hospice social worker needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 hospice social worker skills for your resume and career

2. Patients

Here's how hospice social workers use patients:

Provided advocacy and support services to terminally ill patients, families and/or significant others to maximize benefits and limit out-of-pocket expenses.
Established trusting relationships and alliances with patients by validating feelings and maintaining nonjudgmental attitude with respect for patient decisions.

3. Home Health

Here's how hospice social workers use home health:

Provide community services interventions and supportive interventions to home health and hospice patients.
Supervised students and led workshops for allied professionals and volunteers, developed and led support group for home health aids.

4. MSW

Here's how hospice social workers use msw:

Supervised MSW interns from several universities.
Field Instructor with UW-Milwaukee for MSW Students through clinical field placement, Plans of Care with Interdisciplinary Team Members.

5. Patient Care

Patient care entails the diagnosis, recovery, and control of sickness as well as the maintenance of physical and emotional well-being through the use of healthcare providers' services. Patient care is described as services provided to patients by health practitioners or non-professionals under guidance.

Here's how hospice social workers use patient care:

Assisted family/patient in obtaining respite or inpatient care and provided counseling throughout terminal illness process and patient death.
Identified treatment recommendations for patient care plans and worked closely with an interdisciplinary team and community resources.

6. Crisis Intervention

Here's how hospice social workers use crisis intervention:

Counseled and assisted in coping and grief for individuals and families, and facilitated communications within family and provided crisis intervention.
Provided bereavement counseling, crisis intervention, admission assessments, in-hospital services, and after-death counseling.

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7. Discharge Planning

Here's how hospice social workers use discharge planning:

Recognized for being highly effective in collaborating with community organizations and programs to ensure quality discharge planning.
Participate in interdisciplinary team discharge planning.

8. Terminal Illness

Here's how hospice social workers use terminal illness:

Assessed emotional factors related to terminal illness and assessed environmental resources and obstacles to maintaining safety.
Assessed patient/family psycho-social response to terminal illness and taught coping skills in crisis situations.

9. Community Agencies

Community agencies stand for the organizations operated to provide human service in the community.

Here's how hospice social workers use community agencies:

Establish relationships with outside community agencies to provide education regarding hospice services.
Direct patients to designated community agencies or resources as necessary.

10. Family Dynamics

Here's how hospice social workers use family dynamics:

Identified family dynamics, communication patterns, and involved the patient/family in the plan of care.
Assessed levels of risk and intervenes with complex family dynamics.

11. Quality Care

Here's how hospice social workers use quality care:

Collaborated with an interdisciplinary team to assure quality care.
Act as a member of the interdisciplinary team to provide quality care.

12. Palliative Care

Here's how hospice social workers use palliative care:

Collaborate on an interdisciplinary team consisting of varied medical professionals focusing on palliative care.
Provide psycho social support to patients and education regarding hospice philosophy and palliative care.

13. Financial Resources

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Here's how hospice social workers use financial resources:

Identified and utilized appropriate community resources, assessed patient/family ability to access them, and assessed financial resources when appropriate.
Provide emotional support and assistance in obtaining community and financial resources for patients and families.

14. Community Resources

Community resources are a set of resources that are used in the day to day life of people which improves their lifestyle in some way. People, sites or houses, and population assistance can come under the services offered by community resources.

Here's how hospice social workers use community resources:

Aided families in accessing and utilizing available community resources by making referrals for financial assistance, social security, Medicare/Medicaid.
Provided information to clients regarding community resources relevant to their financial, medical, and psychological needs.

15. Emotional Support

At its core, emotional support involves providing support, reassurance, acceptance, love, and encouragement. It is especially important in a time of stress/sadness as it stabilizes an individual and provides a positive foundation for trust. Honing this skill is important for individuals who want to pursue the career of caregivers and emotional support nurses. Their job includes monitoring mental health and helping patients to handle any mental challenge.

Here's how hospice social workers use emotional support:

Provide emotional support and counseling to individuals and families from admission to discharge through personalized visits.
Provided counseling and emotional support services to hospice patients and their families/caregivers.

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What skills help Hospice Social Workers find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on hospice social worker resumes?

Matt Grace

Assistant Professor, Hamilton College

I have never been in a position to hire, but I do think there are some skills that all employers value. Foremost are oral and written communication skills. Regardless of the specifics of a job, chances are that you'll need to know how to effectively convey information, whether that's in the form of a presentation, a report, or even an email. Having worked in an office job prior to entering academia, I can't tell you how many of my co-workers were unable to craft a simple, coherent e-mail. This might seem trivial, but e-mail miscommunication can slow down a project or lead to internal tensions on a team. Second, while many higher education institutions are pushing students to learn to code, I think data literacy is just as important. The ability to distill trends and tell a story from data are vital skills for any company seeking to connect with the public.

What soft skills should all hospice social workers possess?

Dr. Dianna Cooper

Associate Professor, Campbellsville University

The "change theory" used in social work practice follows several steps, including engaging, assessing, planning, intervening, evaluating, terminating, and following up. Soft skills are most likely to occur in engagement, intervention, and termination. Social workers are trained to "start wherever the client is," understanding that clients can be individuals, families, groups, communities, or organizations. Social workers are trained to respect the client as the expert in their needs, honor self-determination, use a strengths-based approach, and respect difference while using inclusion. The training turns into soft skills such as being empathetic, warm, genuine, and respectful. Social workers also develop skills in knowing when to listen and when to nudge the client toward action. Social workers are trained to intervene and, when change is completed, to terminate. Helping clients know when to end services also requires soft skills of talking about hard topics, seeing a brighter future and setting goals, recognizing when change is happening, and saying goodbye respectfully.

What hard/technical skills are most important for hospice social workers?

Dr. Dianna Cooper

Associate Professor, Campbellsville University

Hard or technical skills are most likely to occur in the stages of assessing, planning, intervening, and evaluating change theory. Social workers are trained to gather lots of information and then analyze strengths and needs. Social workers present their assessments to clients and work together to create goals and the steps that reach goals when executed. The process involves using the client's vision of what "better" looks like. Social workers then use evidence-based techniques to move the client toward the goal and define measures to know when the goal is met. The technical skills used in this process include analyzing many types of information repeatedly, knowing what resources exist and how to refer, knowing how to design effective goals and steps to achieve goals, researching current evidence-based practices, defining and measuring progress, and setting limits and timeframes.

What hospice social worker skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Lillian Wichinsky Ph.D.

Associate Dean, University of Nevada - Reno

The need for social workers with expertise in mental health care, school-based social work, health and substance misuse are particularly important. Sixty percent of mental health care in the US is provided by social workers and the need is growing.

What type of skills will young hospice social workers need?

Samantha Fletcher Ph.D.

Executive Director, National Association of Social Workers, New York State

The core skills of social work do not change over time. These skills include empathy, active listening, critical thinking, assessment, intervention, evaluation, advocacy, policy analysis, and adaptability. Social workers also need to evaluate the organizations they work in to assess for oppressive practices and policies. One of the profession's core values is social justice, which directs social workers to "pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers' social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice" (National Association of Social Workers, 2017). As a profession, social workers aim to dismantle racist, sexist, heterosexist, xenophobic, ableist, classist, and religiously biased systems and structures.

Do you want to know more?

List of hospice social worker skills to add to your resume

The most important skills for a hospice social worker resume and required skills for a hospice social worker to have include:

Social Work
Patients
Home Health
MSW
Patient Care
Crisis Intervention
Discharge Planning
Terminal Illness
Community Agencies
Family Dynamics
Quality Care
Palliative Care
Financial Resources
Community Resources
Emotional Support
Compassion
Hospice Care

Hospice Philosophy
Emotional Factors
Hospice Services
End-of-Life Care
IDG
Nursing Home
IDT
Support Services
Medicare
Medicaid
Community Services
End-of-Life Issues
BSW
Financial Assistance
Hospice Program
Bereavement Services
Psychosocial Support

Provide Emotional Support
DNR
Life Planning
Medical Social Services
Care Facilities
Funeral Planning
Bereavement Program
Care Plan
Psycho-Social Assessments
Senior Care
Community Education
Bereavement Care
Anticipatory Grief
Health Care Decisions
Bereavement Assessments
Community Referrals

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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