doxa.comunicación | nº 30, pp. 187-210 | 197

January-June of 2020

Graciela Lamouret Colom and María Teresa García Nieto

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

The Community of Madrid, with a surface area of 8,022 km2, is the third largest region in Spain based on its number of inhabitants (6,579,711), and it is the most densely populated. The Annual Report by the National Health System of the Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare stated that in 2018 this Community had 108 hospital centres, also being the third tier. Madrid has a rate of 1.2 hospitals for every 100,000 inhabitants. Of these centres, 37 belong to the National Health System, with 12,660 beds and 2,267 outpatient care stations (Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare, 2018:32).

As we already pointed out, in 2016 the Department of Health of the Community of Madrid presented the Humanisation Plan to “foster the improvement of the humanisation of health care” (General Sub-directorate for the Humanisation of Health Care, 2016: 19). The following groups of interest were identified during its development: patients, caretakers, patient associations, citizens, professionals, management, other institutions, society (p. 20); 10 strategic lines were established along with 27 action plans.

These are the strategic axes of the Plan:

Culture of humanisation.

Personalized information and accompaniment.

Humanisation of health care in the early stages of life, childhood and adolescence.

Humanisation in emergency health care.

Humanisation during hospitalization.

Humanisation of intensive care units.

Humanisation in mental health care.

Humanisation and oncology patients.

Humanisation at the end of life.

Madrid Health School.

The presentation of the first of these strategic lines, the Culture of humanisation, already involves aspects that are specifically related to public relations and communication. In this line, the Plan brings up issues that will have direct repercussions on patients’ satisfaction, such as the behaviour of the professional staff and that of management, their attitudes, beliefs, customs and practices, and their way of providing health care. Its application should be horizontal throughout its development, in order to better assess and improve the culture of a specific hospital, health care centre or service. It also underlines the importance of leadership in order to change the culture of an organization, and it presents a “Decalogue of Humanisation” with the main guidelines regarding the relationship of workers within the