PUBLIC RELATIONS AS A TOOL FOR EFFECTIVE HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT

Abstract

This study focused on Public Relations as a tool for effective healthcare management, using Hetta Medical Centre, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria, as a study, with the aim of discovering the relationships between good public relations and indices of Hetta’s Management performance. As a result, self-administered questionnaires were given to purposeful samples of both patients at Hetta, and Hetta staff. Correlation test statistics was applied to data generated, and results show that the correlation coefficients are all positive, and correlation coefficient of the satisfaction items with public relations items (r = 0.327, 4.92, 0.502, 0.511, 0.437, 0.310) and (r = 0.293, 0.514, 0.388, 0.360, 0.370, 0.312) are significant and positive at the acceptable region of 0.01 and 0.05. This showed that there is a positive relationship between good public relations and Hetta Medical Centre’s management performance. The study recommends that private hospitals should practice good public relations, train and retrain both medical and non-medical staff in professional patient care, and invest in state-of-the art medical equipment, among others.