Exploring the leadership discourse in health-based social work: a scoping review

Social work leadership in the health context is under researched with no clear definition or scope of practice. A scoping review was undertaken, in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology, to explore key concepts in the literature related to social work leadership in health, to understand how social work health leadership is defined, and to identify research gaps and limitations. A review of EBSCO, ProQuest, Scopus, Web of Science, Informit, SAGE and Cochrane Library databases identified 1499 articles for inclusion, with 17 papers moved through to data extraction alongside 13 articles from a grey literature search on Google. Following thematic analysis, five themes were identified: there is difficulty defining social work leadership overall and in the health context; the unique style of social work leadership is valued in the literature; there is a lack of leadership education in social work qualifying degree programs, and a lack of professional development tailored to the needs of social work; and there are limitations in leadership development opportunities which then constrain the growth of social work leaders. These gaps in the current literature pose a broader risk to understanding leadership within the profession, as well as providing an evidence base for future research.