Communication mediums used by patients and health professionals during access and provision of healthcare in low resource settings: A cross-sectional study

Abstract Background: The issue of mediums to communicate to make enquiries to a hospital in finding out the type of services available, availability of physicians and beds at the receiving hospitals, and a reminder system remains a challenge for patients and providers of the health service in the Sub-Sharan Africa. This present study sought to review the existing healthcare communication mediums from the perspectives of patients and health professionals at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, KumasiMethod A cross-sectional design was employed with a multilevel sampling method to select a total of 651 participants consisting of 304 patients, 303 health workers and 44 hospital directorate managers for the study. A well-structured survey questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents.Results Most hospital staff (66.4%) used a blend of social media and direct means (face-to-face medium) for communicating among themselves whereas 89.8% only communicates with management through meetings sections. Predominantly, 97.4% of the staff communicated by direct means (face-to-face medium) with patients. Almost all the management of the hospital communicated with the general public using mediums like letters and official memos.Conclusions There is evidence of combination of both traditional mediums (face-to-face) and the technological mediums (social media) for communications by health providers and health consumers. However there is a dissatisfaction with delayed information flow and poor feedback with the use of these available mediums. Therefore, a digital mobile application communication system is recommended to offer efficient communication within and outside the Ghanaian health facilities.