Patients spend certain time at the stationary health care institutions depending on their illness and statinary profile, therefore professional social help is necessary both for the patients and for their family members. The function of the social worker as the specialist is to intensify adaptation abilities of a cured person to the environment, to renovate his relationship with community, helping him to integrale into sotiety and to stimulate more comprehensive social personality function. Nowadays there are not a few medical institutions where the social problems of the patients are solved by medical workers themselves. This work requires a lot of additional time and special knowledge. It can cause some undergoing of medical work quality and quantity, and at the same time the social problems of the patients can be left unsolved. Making this research the main purpose was to find out the need of a social worker at the stationary health care institutions. The objects of the research were chosen from the stationary medical institutions of Alytus district where by random selection any physicians of these health care institutions and patients cured there at that time were questioned. The survey of the problems was determined, the plan was made and the relevant research method was chosen using theoretical method refering to analised scientific literature and juristic base. By virture of the empirical methods the anonimous questionnaire was given to find out the need of a social... [to full text]