Cross-Cultural Decision-Making in Healthcare

This chapter describes how people are connected to each other through a common system of encoding and decoding messages. Opening the European gate has made intercultural communication omnipresent, and this includes health care. Internationally-based tasks need new, culture-aware medical practitioners. The challenges, barriers, and solutions in the aforementioned area based on the personal experiences of the authors. The chapter concludes that in spite of personal experience, intercultural tension continues to be a major hinderance to patient healthcare services.

Managed Healthcare

Satisfaction with life is very important for a doctor, as it affect his clinical practice. The aim of this chapter is to analyze doctor satisfaction with life, its influence on the communication process and the doctor's daily job activities. Data was collected from a group of 40 doctors from the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship surgical ward and the non-surgical division. The satisfaction with life depends on the gender of the doctor (p < 0.05). The life satisfaction results, remained statistically significant, based on the average correlation value to the communication process with the patients (p < 0.05). A higher level of life satisfaction was observed in the group of doctors from non-surgical wards.

The Impact of Management and Leadership Roles in Building Competitive Healthcare Units

This chapter discusses the leadership features that support the creation of an innovative culture of the organization, with particular emphasis on the attributes that are essential to building a competitive advantage in the medical services market. According to the concept of new management, managers are the initiators of change and development within the healthcare facility where they work. They require professionalism and a high level of competence which allows them to create and implement creative management solutions. Thus, the influence of management and the role of the leader in building competitive health care units is undisputed. Due to the specific nature of health care facilities, the ability to build trust, as well as the clear and precise communication of plans and visions, is gaining importance, in addition to knowledge and experience.

Managed Healthcare

This chapter describes how managed healthcare is a systemic and institutional approach for cost management. It might be the remedy for increasing demand for limited human and material resources. In most of the developed countries the number of elderly patients with multimorbidity is increasing every year. This situation creates the necessity for implementing new policies based on cost-effective methods of diagnosis and treatment. Keeping quality high is crucial for patient safety, although cost reduction must occur to ensure the proper care for all. However, several ethical concerns are raised with these changes. The main is that although the physicians are focused on cost-effective procedures, they will take the patient's opinions into consideration. The outcome of an undermined relationship between doctors and their patients may be contrary to the reduction of the compliance and adherence may in fact increase the cost of services for specific patients. The proper communication patterns and post-discharge care is mandatory for limiting unwanted additional costs and benefits policy makers keeping patient satisfaction high.

The Physiotherapist as a Health Educator

This chapter is devoted to the work of physiotherapists, who must be able to recognize a variety of limitations and contraindications. It presents physiotherapy as a profession and the physical therapist as a professional, a man perfectly prepared to work with the sick and needy and a member of the rehabilitation team (therapeutic) who is therapist-humanist ensuring his patients are treated properly and ethically.

The Patient/Provider Relationship in Emergency Medicine

Emergency medicine is a rapidly developing medical specialty which focuses on the diagnostic process, initial stabilization, and the treatment of patients suffering from acute illnesses or injuries. Emergency care can be provided in prehospital settings by emergency medical services, as well as in emergency departments. The primary providers of emergency care are: emergency medicine physicians, emergency nurses, and paramedics. Emergency medical personnel are required to be prepared to take decisive action at any time of day or night. It is essential for them to possess basic knowledge relating to psychology and an ability to utilize interpersonal communication skills. A critical role of medical workers in emergency settings is to provide a patient with emotional support coupled with medical assistance. Interpersonal communication skills depend on the personal abilities of an individual, however, these skills can be also enhanced through training and work experience.

Patient Satisfaction

This chapter describes how there are three major stakeholders in a patient's hospitalization: the patient, the healthcare providers, and the hospital. Satisfaction with the care and hospital experience is important to the patient because evidence suggests satisfied patients are more likely to adhere to self-care instructions and have better clinical outcomes. Hospitals have aimed to provide care and service that is highly satisfying to patients because it is the right thing to do and because reputation affects volume and revenues which in turn impacts the fiscal bottom line. Unfortunately, not all patients enjoy equal levels of satisfaction in the health care system. To succeed amongst today's competition; healthcare organizations must be patient-centered and win the loyalty of their patients by providing an outstanding patient experience, then retaining these patients, increasing the number of patients through positive word of mouth and continually delivering greater value.

Social Capital and Subjective Quality of Life

This chapter describes how in recent decades, the concepts of social capital and quality of life have attracted the interest of both theoreticians and creators of social life. Both on the micro-, meso- and macrosocial levels, social capital has been viewed as one of the key elements of human well-being. Its positive influence on social well-being has been underlined by academics, practitioners of social life. In this chapter, the authors evaluate the relationship between social capital and the mental well-being of individuals. Through empirical analysis, the results of a representative research conducted among residents of one of the biggest Polish cities were examined. This concludes that social capital and social interaction are essential to the health of the individual.

Building Relationships Within a Therapeutic Team

This chapter describes how a therapeutic team is a term defining all qualified healthcare workers, who are actively participating in the treatment, care and rehabilitation processes of a patient. Depending on the type of department or institution where a patient is staying, he can come across numerous therapeutic teams. A therapeutic team consists of a group of people, who fulfil a treatment process together. Their cooperation may result on the most effective strategy to provide care, due to every member of a team being a source of information about the patient and his afflictions. Professional development of every member of a therapeutic team is an important component in improving quality of provided services, which effects the increase of a patient's satisfaction level. Therefore, its role is incredibly important. Moreover, professional development is a process that takes place during a human lifespan and is associated with activities, achievements, but also with existence, expression and self-realization.

Formal Methods for Assessing Patient Satisfaction in a Patient-Doctor Relationship

When patients visit a doctor, they not only expect to be cured, but also to feel that they are taken care of. The patients like to be treated like guests, sit in a nice place during waiting for a doctor and feel that they are taken care of seriously at the reception desk. All these factors are important for the patients but the relationship with doctors seems to be the most valid. When the patients can choose a clinic where they want to make an appointment with a doctor, the owners and managers of the clinics try to persuade people to choose their clinic. Hence more and more often managers of the clinics try to find out the opinion of the patients, so scientists carried out the research on this phenomenon and called it Patient Satisfaction. This chapter presents the application of fuzzy sets and fuzzy relations to gather and analyze the information from patients and compute their contentment. Using classical logic is less appropriate because the patients can only choose two values: they are satisfied or dissatisfied. Fuzzy logic let the patients choose more phrases for their opinions.