the health care system and patients and their relatives. Also, within the perspective of corporate social responsibility, communication is a basic element to achieve osmosis between the hospital and the social structure it is entrenched in” (Zarco, digital interview held on July 17th 2019).

5. Purpose and methodology

Following our study of the Health Care Humanisation Plan of the Community of Madrid, the general purpose of our research is to learn about the communication actions taken in four hospitals in Madrid regarding the humanisation of health care, and to explore the perception that health care professionals have of it.

As we already pointed out, the field of study defined for our research holds all public hospitals in the Community of Madrid, due to this being one of the first regions to implement humanisation plans. The study population is composed of 37 hospitals belonging to the National Health System.

We take the hospital as a research unit in order to learn about the communication processes inside this type of organization, regarding the different audiences, participants and recipients of the different actions for the humanisation of health care. The hospital is also a recipient and executor of the measures established by the Community of Madrid as per the 2016-2019 Humanisation Plan.

The final sample selected is composed of 4 hospitals that stated their will to collaborate in this research, all members of the Social Responsibility in Health Care Network, formed by administrators and managers of Spanish hospitals, committed to the task of humanizing health care.

When selecting the participant hospitals we used the criteria of size and location, choosing the following: San Carlos Clinical Hospital, University Hospital 12 de Octubre, University Hospital Infanta Cristina of Parla and the Hospital of Guadarrama. Although the sample is not sufficiently representative, the results of the research allow us to reach some reasonable, adequate conclusions.