“With the pandemic, communication in the health sector has not changed, only the communicative megaphone has been amplified. The contradictions that dialogue with science has generated, the power exercised by media vanity have thrown the world into a worrying confusion. If in football chatting at the bar can spark local discussions, the extent of communication inefficiency in terms of health in recent years has shown how much inexperience and incompetence are widespread in the media landscape. Remaining on the hypothetical level, this enormous communicative vulnus can be considered as a call to serious work to guarantee a new ‘healthy’ communication. Since there was no prevention, we are now humbly called to join forces and reflect on what to do “. This was stated by Pier Luigi Spada, emergency surgeon at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, in the latest testimony of the first edition of ‘Raise the Patients’ Voice ‘.
The higher education project promoted by Janssen Italia in collaboration with Altems (High School of Economics and Management of Health Systems of the Catholic University of Rome), aims to respond to the need on the part of patient associations to communicate effectively with institutions. The calendar of meetings with the teachers involved who have addressed issues such as the general health scenario and organizational models, stakeholder mapping and stakeholder engagement, institutional communication and negotiation techniques in recent months ends with the Spada effective communication laboratory. and, in fact, the development of an integrated communication plan.
“Communicating health – stresses Spada – requires the analysis of new paradigms that are able to bridge the confusion that exists between a term that represents a state of being (health) and another that indicates an organization ( health). Health is not just a theme with which everyone is confronted every moment of their life, but it is a good that touches everyone’s deep emotions.. In safeguarding one’s health, we relive the ancestral themes of survival and the life / death conflict. None of the great themes such as economics, politics, culture, education, defense, the environment, which also touch emotional chords and above all our daily life, manages to involve equally profound notes in such an instinctive way. Only through a radical re-evaluation of the dialogue on health could we start again to outline the foundations of a new communication in health “.
According to the surgeon, in this context, central is the role of patient associations, real protagonists in the definition of health policy. “Patient associations – says Spada – have the great tool that comes from the experience of personal life, of a family member or loved one. The experience thus has different angles of reading and therefore of narration. This is the main tool for the above any technical consideration. The areas of communicative training are certainly a valid aid to perfecting the narrative so that communication can be effective. However, at the moment there are few adequate spaces because there are few really competent trainers “. The effect of telling oneself “has an impact far greater than that of simply reporting a story, and it is to refine and experience what creates the link between narration and the public that the training network should be strengthened in order to open a visible space that go beyond a simple campaign or a marathon, “he concludes.
