Strategic communication plays an important role in the process of creating innovative attitudes and behaviour among primary care professionals. The willingness to change attitudes enhances primary care staff's readiness to change everyday practices, thus facilitating the implementation of evidence-based care.
Strategic communication should lead to a more evenly distributed research commitment among all health care professionals, thus facilitating communication between them and patients in order to clarify, for example, the causes of disease.
Aim: To evaluate the long-term utilisation of strategic communication as a factor of importance when changing work practices among primary care staff. Background: In many health care organisations, there is a gap between theory and practice. This gap hinders the provision of optimal evidence-based practice and, in the long term, is unfavourable for patient care. One way of overcoming this barrier is systematically structured communication between the scientific theoretical platform and clinical practice. Methods: This longitudinal evaluative study was conducted among a primary care staff cohort. Strategic communication was considered to be the intervention platform and included a network of ambassadors who acted as a component of the implementation. Measurements occurred 7 and 12 years after formation of the cohort. A questionnaire was used to obtain information from participants. In total, 846 employees (70%) agreed to take part in the study. After 12 years, the 352 individuals (60%) who had remained in the organisation were identified and followed up. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis were used to analyse the data. Findings: Continuous information contributed to significant improvements over time with respect to new ideas and the intention to change work practices. There was a statistically significant synergistic effect on the new way of thinking, that is, willingness to change work practices. During the final two years, the network of ambassadors had created a distinctive image for itself in the sense that primary care staff members were aware of it and its activities. This awareness was associated with a positive change with regard to new ways of thinking. More years of practice was inversely associated with willingness to change work practices. Strategic communication may lead to a scientific platform that promotes high-quality patient care by means of new methods and research findings.
Objective: To explore lived experiences of patients communicating with and receiving information from primary health care. Design: Qualitative study analysing transcribed interviews by descriptive content analysis. Setting: Recruitment and interviews took place in southern Sweden in three primary care centres where privacy and undisturbed interview environments was ensured. Subjects: 17 primary care patient informants, 9 men and 8 women aged 31-84 years with varying educational levels from primary school to post graduates. Main outcome measures: Thematic categories and subcategories reporting the lived experience of the patients. Results: The analysis yielded three categories and identified as a main theme a feeling of unpredictability based on the emotional aspects of feeling lost and vulnerable when trying to access primary care. The category" Need for easy access" illustrated emotional aspects of importance to patients when contacting primary health care." Need for individual adaptation" described the need to individually adapt health related information." Information exchange" comprised experiences of information evaluation and understanding new information. Conclusions: Patients generally trusted the information received, but experienced a lack of communication, which evoked feelings of unpredictability and abandonment. Experiences of limited access to primary health care and the need for varying degrees of adaptation on the part of the individual were factors of concern for how patients experienced the care. KEY POINTS Smooth communication and understandable information are fundamental for quality primary health care. This qualitative interview study identified the following key points from analysing the views of 17 patients: Patients indicated a feeling of unpredictability due to lack of access to and communication with health professionals. Patients sometimes reported an inability to understand information conveyed by health professionals. Being able to form relationships with health professionals was crucial for patients' trust and understanding.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.