Patient representative programs: a social work perspective.

Patient Representatives are one of the fastest growing new human service occupations functioning in hospital settings. The patient representative's role and function bears certain similarities to social work and has the potential for being seen as pre-empting part of its domain. This article describes the role of patient representatives, reports on a survey of hospitals with patient representative and social work programs and examines some of the issues that this new occupational group may pose for social workers in hospital settings.