Accreditation knowledge acquired by personnel in the Marseille hospital

Sensitization and educational training programmes are important pre-requisites in order to ensure the understanding of the issues at stake in the accreditation process. According to the preparatory research involved for this work, there has been no study published nor is there any documentation available on such a topic, specifically on carrying out the sensitization process to successful completion. The aims of this study are to evaluate the effectiveness of the sensitization phase and to refine general recommendations to serve as a guide for health institutions and their communications policies. A transversal randomised study was conducted through the distribution of a questionnaire to 107 health professionals from 23 clinical services in the public hospital system in Marseille. The results demonstrate that the knowledge about accreditation seems to be well integrated, with only 7 of the professionals being unaware of the accreditation programme, and 58% of them associating the accreditation process with an administrative procedure. Grouping the staff's responses according to professional category has shown to have almost no influence on the results. The level of overall knowledge is greater in more highly trained personnel (p < 0.05), but there was a poor level of knowledge regarding the internal organisational structures that existed. 75% of the health professionals thought that communication about accreditation was insufficient. The study authenticated the positive benefits of communication and identified a certain number of stumbling blocks to avoid. Several recommendations are proposed.