In the Community of Madrid, specifically, social responsibility in health care has gained prominence since the year 2017, with the presentation, by the Department of Health, of the aforementioned Strategic Framework for the Promotion of Social Responsibility in Health Care. An idea is clearly stated in its text: social responsibility “in the health care area acquires a strategic importance, seeing as it is directly related to an ethical and humanizing perspective of health care organizations” (General Directorate for the Coordination of Citizen Information and the Humanisation of Health Care, 2017: 3).

But social responsibility in health care doesn’t come only from hospital initiatives. We find other CSR actions taken by companies from areas other than health care supporting hospitals that also contribute to the humanisation of health care. We can look, for example, to those initiatives destined to the improvement of spaces in public hospitals, or to those that aim to decrease the traumatic impact of hospital stays, or of surgical interventions, especially in children.

3.4. Humanisation and patient-centered care

Julio Zarco, Director of the Humans Foundation and former general Director of Citizen Information and Humanisation of Health Care of the Community of Madrid, states that humanizing “means to warrant the dignity of a person when he/she is most vulnerable, it is also a compassionate approach towards treating the patient, therapeutic and empathic, and to establish a symmetrical relationship between patients and professionals” (Zarco, 2018a).

Jose Carlos Bermejo, a specialist in humanisation and the director of the San Camilo Hospital in Tres Cantos (Madrid), considers that a humanized health care must respect the patient as a unique individual, and acknowledge “the importance of patients and their relatives in health care” (Bermejo, 2014:3). However, the humanisation of health care also demands an efficient communication. The patient must be “aided to understand his/her situation with clear and accurate information”, he/she must know the options available regarding treatment, “otherwise, he/she will only play a passive, dependent role” (Bermejo, 2014:3).

Nevertheless, some health care professionals question the term “humanisation” and instead use “patient-centered care” (Zarco, 2018b:2018). This expression, used in Anglo-Saxon literature (King and Hope, 2013; Stewart, 1995, 2001; Greene, Tuzzio and Cherkin, 2012), refers to a specific way to conduct relationships between health care professionals and patients, more attentive to the needs, preferences and values of the latter at the time of making decisions and when prescribing and applying health care and treatments. Patient centred care can only be conceived from a bio-psycho-social perspective, exceeding strictly biomedical schemes, and based on a bond of trust between patient and physician (King and Hope, 2013; Stewart, 1995, 2001; Greene, Tuzzio and Cherkin, 2012).

In the book Patient-Centred Medicine: Transforming the Clinical Method (Stewart et al, 2003), a group of researchers from the Universities of Ontario, Western Ontario and Ottawa, Canada, attribute the concept “Patient centred medicine” to the Hungarian psychiatrist Michael Balint, who, along with a group of peers, after studying the psychology of the relationship between doctors and patients, coined the term and pointed out its differences with sickness centred care (Balint, 1979). Patient centred care will entail a transformation in the clinical method (Stevens, 1974) and its refinement