A PUBLIC RELATIONS SUPPORTED APPROACH TO EMOTION MANAGEMENT PROCESS IN HOSPITALS / Hastanelerde Duygu Yönetimi Sürecine Halkla İlişkiler Destekli Bir Yaklaşım

Abstract

The healthcare sector includes a working area where emotions are experienced at a high rate. The patient and his / her relatives may not be familiar with the situation, and the risks associated with it may be quite high. There may be a possibility that the patient may die or fall into a situation that is too bad to be treated, other doctors and staff consulted may raise suspicions about the current treatment and other patients’ current situation may influence mood in a positive or negative way. In this process, the emotion management process is of great importance and public relations practices are considered to be a guiding attribute in the healthcare sector. In this context, first of all, information about the process of emotion management and its practice in the healthcare sector will be conveyed, approaches to the subject in terms of public relations and the finding from the semi-structured interviews will be presented. These semi-structured interviews made with the patients and their relatives in understanding emotional conditions in hospitals. The works of Lewis (2005) and Smith and Kleinman (1989) were used in order to prepare the interview forms and to the questions. Findings of interviews show that patients and their relatives mostly affecting by approaches of the personal and the events which they witnessed and also according to participants, in state hospitals there is a lack of concern about giving good experiences to patients.

Keywords

• emotion management
• healthcare sector
• hospitals
• public relations
• duygu yönetimi
• sağlık sektörü
• hastaneler
• halkla i̇lişkiler