Best Practices to Improve the Healthcare Patient Experience in Gynaecology and Obstetrics

The quality and level of the Czech healthcare system is a very current and often discussed topic. The Czech healthcare system is considered to be one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world, but is very often criticized as being too ?technological? and ?scientific? and the psychosocial aspects are neglected. The social competencies of doctors are expected, but not enough attention is payed to their definition, development and creation of conditions for their application. We need to change the curriculum for undergraduate and postgraduate doctors? psychosocial preparation. The research focuses on gynaecological and obstetric specialization, where the need for a psychosocial approach is seen as being essential. This paper reviews the conceptual and empirical literature in order to develop a model of the various aspects of the doctor-patient relationship encompassed by the ?patient-centred? concept. Based on the empirical studies we identified ?best practices? that should be essential for education based on the competency for undergraduate and postgraduate doctors? preparation. The main methods are three focus groups for six doctors at different levels of experience and nine in-depth interviews with expectant mothers who had varying experiences with parturition: spontaneous parturition, planned caesarean section parturition, long-term hospitalization up to four weeks. The main outcome of the study is to describe the best practise of doctors/obstetricians, which is acceptable to doctors and corresponds to the needs and expectations of mothers.