Abstract:

The purpose Our study aims to reveal how health workers working in both private and public health institutions assess the public relations unit, the level of knowledge about the unit and their attitudes towards the unit.

The Method: The study included 280 people working in public and private health institutions as a sample. The online survey form is used to obtain data.  The survey form consists of two sections. The first part of the survey form contains socio-demographic characteristics, while the second part contains 30 expressions to determine the level of jurisdiction related to the public relations unit. In the analysis of data, the SPSS 25 program was used. For analysis after reliability analysis, illustrative statistics, the Independent Samples T test and the One-Way ANOVA test were used.

The findings According to the results of the analysis, 86.4% of the health workers who participated in our work said that the public relations unit was needed. 36.8 percent of participants said that the manager should be responsible for public relations and 52.5 percent said that the main function of public relations should focus on patient complaints. Additionally, statistically significant differences were identified from the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants to the age, type of hospital and year of work in the profession (p<0,05). Finally, it has been shown that there is an intermediate level of participation in the information level of public relationships.

The result As a result, the participants found that their knowledge and attitudes regarding public relations were on a medium level. This situation has increased in recent years and it is recommended to increase the level of knowledge on the subject in order to be able to advance competition and improve relations with the public. The support should be provided by specialists who receive the subject-related daily training or those who are able to develop themselves in accordance with the principle of lifelong learning through institutional support training. Guidelines for the public relations unit and definitions of tasks can be created and the nature of the relevant work can be enhanced. Because the study sample is limited and the study is not too frequent to the opinion of health workers in particular on the subject, the study will contribute to literature in larger samples on the subject and with the participation of health professionals.

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