ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two sections both of which designed in the form of cross sectional survey procedures. The first part is an examination of the nature of decision making experienced by a sample of social work and non social work hospital patients from one acute care teaching hospital in Boston. The second part is an examination of the utilisation of resources by the social work sample. For the study of decision making processes during hospitalisation data collection had to be completed after the hospital treatment and discharge. No pretests could be completed prior to hospitalisation as admission to hospital was not necessarily a predictable event. The hospital in which this study was based is a 750 bed teaching hospital providing a variety of specialist medical and surgical services to a widely diverse population in Boston.
