engleski

Healing begins with a smile: the Croatian experience

Background: During 2005 in order to improve communication between health professionals and patients, Croatian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare started program named „Healing begins with a smile“. Healthcare professionals were instructed to smile in every type of communication. Aim: To assess program implementation among healthcare professionals and effect on medical team communication within team and with patients. Methods: Personal structural interview with 24 project leaders who covered 14 clinical hospitals, 22 general hospitals, 36 special hospitals and 66 health centers in all Croatian regions with around 35000 employed healthcare professionals. Results: 23 (95.8%) program leaders reported huge difficulties in program implementation among healthcare professionals. All program leaders reported that the lack of communication was due to bad working conditions, insufficient number of qualified personnel and work overload. And constant smiling added more stress to their everyday duties. Also, there was no education on coping with stress provided before the project started. Conclusion: Due to collected reports and results, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare recognized healthcare profession as a vulnerable group. Training in communication within medical team and coping with stress on workplace needed to be organized to improve and sustain good communication among health care professionals and in communication with patients.

Health care workers; intervention; communication

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