Perceived Communication and Cooperation with Physicians and Nurses and Occupational Outcomes Among Medical Social Workers in China: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background/Objectives: Medical social work is performed in hospital teams, but evidence remains limited on how medical social workers’ perceived communication and cooperation with physicians and nurses are associated with occupational outcomes. Methods: Using the medical social work module of the China Social Work Longitudinal Survey 2019 (CSWLS2019), this cross-sectional study examined job satisfaction, personal accomplishment, self-rated service quality, and emotional exhaustion. We constructed a four-item communication-and-cooperation index and estimated ordinary least squares (OLS) models with HC3 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors and city fixed effects. Robustness and exploratory supplementary checks assessed sample definition, alternative specifications, single-item ordered logit models, decomposed components, moderation, and a supplementary seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) system. Results: The index was positively associated with job satisfaction (b = 0.260, p = 0.0010), personal accomplishment (b = 0.416, p = 0.0335), and self-rated service quality (b = 0.151, p = 0.0275). Its association with emotional exhaustion was negative but not statistically significant in the main model (b = −0.186, p = 0.1207), although it became significant in the stricter sample. Decomposed and moderation models provided limited evidence for stable component-specific or moderation patterns. Conclusions: The findings should be interpreted as exploratory associational evidence rather than causal effects. Perceived communication and cooperation with physicians and nurses appear more consistently linked to favorable occupational evaluations than to emotional exhaustion among medical social workers in China.