They question the satisfaction surveys that always achieve results higher than 80 percent. These results are perceived as “a failure if they don’t reach 90 percent”.

It is important to point out the perception that these medical professionals have about the type of patient. An informed patient, who asks and demands, and who will force a gradual improvement of the system.

The youngest participant in the group holds an optimistic view. She refers to a new way of practicing medicine, more humanized. “With these new professionals and appealing to the sensibility of the older ones the health system will tend to improve”.

7. Conclusions

Since the 1984 Insalud Humanisation Plan until the Plan developed by the Community of Madrid in 2016, Spanish hospitals established and more or less informed about actions regarding patient centred care, which apart from assistance and empathy included active listening, information and empowerment of the patient when making decisions about his/her health and life.

However, and despite the relevance assigned to communication by the Humanisation Plan, in the results of our research we observe the non-existence of a clear line of activities of communication regarding humanisation. And, while many activities are conducted, as we could see, no specific channels or proposals have been established in order to reach all members of a hospital’s staff. Also, although the Plan acknowledges the importance of organizational culture, the problems seem to stem from the lack of planning and specific channels to communicate humanisation in the analyzed hospitals.

Thus, in large hospitals, health care professionals demand more communicational efficiency. Messages don’t reach them, “they go unnoticed”. Only those who were already interested in the subject are informed. Therefore we verified that communication in the hospital sector has not improved as it should.

The perception by representatives of larger hospitals corroborates the conclusion reached by previous studies. The magnitude of certain hospital centres hinders communication between same-level departments and it is an obstacle for the proper development of vertical communication, for which many efforts of internal communication get lost along the way.

However, the communication of humanisation in smaller-sized hospitals is perceived as efficient: “it reaches the target”. Undoubtedly, their more reduced, less complex structure and a much more straightforward communication contribute to that.

A future line of work, derived from this study, could be posed in the spectrum of large hospitals, with middle management and informal leaders from the different services, with the purpose of turning them into true ambassadors