Media as an environment of the modern patient and medical care institutions – management of communication in medicine – selected tools and marketing strategies

Health communication, in the opinion of Tomasz Goban-Klas, is primarily a social practice in healthcare and a field for reflection and study. The changes occurring, at the semantic and at the tool level, result ever increasing interest of scientific circles’, especially in issues included in the field of communication involving the new telecommunications media: digital, online, and mobile. This paper presents the selected levels of health communication, the medial activity of patients and medical institutions that fall within the area of analysis/social practice. The aim is to present selected concepts of medical marketing strategies and the changes occurring in the profile of the modern patient, with particular regard to the development of a technically oriented communication process. Changes taking place in the management of communication in medicine create new opportunities as well as threats. In addition, they initiate changes, which are not universally approved, in the course of interaction previously regarded as the model for contact between the patient and medical staff. Changes in the understanding of the relationships between the physician and the patient result, among others, in the creation of successive levels of communication, areas of activity and the means of reaching potential clients, as evidenced by the use of virtual space. This are is being annexed with an increasingly greater scope, hence its observation and analysis seem to be an extraordinary challenge for social scientists. An overview of the selected problem area has been based on a selective review, literature search and analysis.