Shanghai, China – With an aging population and rising rates of severe illnesses such as cancer, China has increasingly promoted hospice and palliative care in recent decades. As part of a national pilot program, the City of Shanghai now has approximately 250 community health centers and a dozen general hospitals that provide hospice care. However, there is a shortage of skilled professionals to meet the need. To strengthen the capacity of both social workers and volunteers to provide these much needed services, this past summer NYU Silver and NYU Shanghai’s MSW Program at Shanghai and New York launched a Palliative and End-of-Life Care Certificate Program (PELC) at NYU Shanghai.
“While people in China are living longer, they may not be living well,” said Professor Qingwen Xu, the Coordinator of the MSW Program at Shanghai and New York. “People navigating the challenges of terminal illnesses need specialized support, counseling and care.”
Originally, Dr. Xu planned to replicate the Post-Master’s Certificate Program in PELC that the School’s Zelda Foster Studies Program in Palliative and End-of-Life Care (Zelda Program) has long offered at NYU’s Washington Square Campus. However, the program needed significant adaptations, not only for Chinese culture, but also because social work broadly, and PELC specifically, are still relatively new in China.
The original program was designed to provide advanced training to practicing social workers with a MSW and at least one year of experience in the PELC field. However, Dr. Xu explained, many people providing palliative and hospice care in China are patients’ family members or volunteers rather than social work professionals. “They actually got into the field because of personal experience with their family members and particularly during the COVID pandemic,” she said.
To meet the needs of Shanghai’s emerging PELC social workers, Dr. Xu and Clinical Assistant Professor Qian Xie, Coordinator of Practicum Education at the NYU Shanghai Campus, collaborated with Clinical Professor and Zelda Program Founding Director Susan Gerbino to develop an introductory certificate program focused on the foundations of PELC social work. Rather than having professional prerequisites, applicants were evaluated based on their motivation to serve and the extent to which completion of the certificate program would benefit their work in various settings.
Over the course of eight virtual modules and three days of in-person sessions, including hands-on case studies, the 23 students enrolled in the program’s first cohort gained a broad understanding of PELC social work theory and practice. The sessions were taught by Dr. Gerbino as well as professional trainers from Singapore and Taiwan, cities with well-established PELC fields and a shared Asian culture. Those trainers included Andy Sim, MSW ’13, who was both an MSW Fellow and Leadership Fellow in the Zelda Program. “There may be other PELC training programs in China,” said Dr. Xu, “but ours is the only one that truly brings in international experience and applies a psychological, social, spiritual and physical framework.”
Looking ahead, Dr. Xu plans to build on the success of the foundational certificate and offer more advanced tracks so that NYU Silver meets provider needs as the PELC field in Shanghai matures.
About NYU Silver School of Social Work
Founded in 1960 and renowned for a strong tradition of excellence in direct social work practice and dedication to social justice, NYU Silver has provided rigorous training to more than 20,000 social work practitioners and leaders in every area of the field, making it the leading destination for students who want to become innovative practitioners at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of social work practice. The School has four campuses in the heart of New York City, Rockland County, Westchester County, and Shanghai.