Health Personnel’s Point of View to the Public Relations : An Example of Selcuk University Medicine Faculty Hospital

Public relations have a great importance for institutions and organisations. Public Relations is an important management function in these days which is so called the age of communication. Especially, in the providing health and health services have a special importance in the maintenance of the human life and also in the creation and preservation of quality of life. Public relations, it is getting extra important especially for hospitals which serves health services to the public. Public relations fulfil an important mission on publicity of hospital, for obtaining a good reputation and image, for having good relationships with other foundations, on in service training and in cases of crisis. A hospital’s having a good image affects hospital personnel in a positive manner. For this positive reputation, it is important that public relations must be noticed by health personnel and hospital management, and it must be given sufficient importance. This study is intended for revealing how health personnel perceive public relations activities, what do they know about public relations and what do they think about it. For this purpose, 233 health personnel from university hospital were asked with prepared poll questions. Data were evaluated with SPSS 15.1 programme. Frequency analysis and cross tables of data have been made and arithmetic and standard deviation values have been found.In this study, it was identified that 15.0 percent of hospital personnel was not aware of public relations department. While 82.0 percent (191 people) of health staff was in believe of the necessity of public relations department in hospitals, 9.9 percent (23 people) of health personnel have declared that they had no idea and another 8.2 percent (19 people) of health personnel was declared that public relations department was not necessary. Taking into consideration the obtained data, it was concluded that an important part of the people who serve in hospital didn’t have sufficient information about public relations department and so, internal public relations activities was more required. Health personnel’s right understanding and usage of public relations department is important for public relations department to pursue successful studies. Also, public relations department’s pursuing studies for health personnel is important for health personnel’s being aware of the presence of the public relations department included with the institute. By declaring that the public relations department must work related with the chief physician, the big majority of health personnel have found it appropriate that public relations department pursue its studies related with hospital management. This situation is important for public relations department’s working with hospital’s highest manager.