Prague, July 28, 2008 - COMM-ON-LINE - A final stage

The HMCgroup has entered the final stage of the COMM-ON-LINE pilot project for the development of communication competencies of medical professionals. The entire project and its individual education systems are based on the communication competencies of profiles for individual work posts in medical establishments.

Currently about 100 work posts at all levels and specialisations have been recorded.  These communication profiles are the starting point for individually set education processes in the field of communication through which a worker should pass to achieve positive changes in communication abilities and skills, and be able to positively affect the course of the therapeutic and nursing process in a patient. More than 400 employees of prominent Prague medical establishments such as IKEM (Clinical and Experimental Medicine Institute), FTN (Thomayer Teaching Hospital) and NMSKB (Hospital of the Merciful Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo). Output from the pilot project for the implementation of this system (COMM-ON-LINE, http://www.commonline.eu/) are being presented by the HMCgroup at an international forum (EACH - European Association for Communication in Healthcare, Oslo, September 2008) and in a prepared book publication entitled Communication Management in Healthcare.

Professionally mastered communication not only improves the quality of interpersonal relations, but is also an important tool for increasing the success rate of modern therapeutic processes. It significantly supports the increase in diagnostic accuracy, increases patient co-responsibility in decision-making processes and success rate of maintaining therapeutic regimes. It is also an important link in reputation management and image building of every medical establishment.

Today communication is considered a part of the modern-day marketing C- mix, so it is essential that it is managed in the same way strategically as its other parts, i.e. customer values, costs and convenience. (Convenience is adequacy, comfort and the way in which a service is delivered to the customer, i.e. this also means medical care).

The COMM-ON-LINE project involves all the abovementioned aspects and implements them in its own education programmes. A specialised interdisciplinary team, consisting of medical workers (nurses, doctors), psychologists, marketing and communication strategists, researchers, experienced tutors and experts in the field of education and specialists in mass and social communication and ICT technology are working on developing these programmes.  

Study programmes in the field of communication and healthcare are based on the latest research and projects from European and world studies which are available to the HMCgroup also thanks to its partnership with EACH organisations.