USE OF BALNEARY CURE NATURAL FACTORS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PRACTITIONERS AND BENEFICIARIES

The present research aims to determine the perception of medical staff regarding the use of natural therapies as well as the perception of their beneficiaries, the patients. The objective of our study was to analyse the feedback of a proposed target group. The target group consisted of 593 patients who benefited from medical rehabilitation treatment in public and private healthcare facilities using the natural balneal factors specific to the Dobrogea region and 254 employees of these sanitary units. The cross-sectional prospective survey was conducted over two months by completing a specific questionnaire by the subjects included in our study. The data collected was processed using the Excel Program, IBM SPSS Statistics 20. The results considered statistically significant were those for which p < alpha = 0.05. The effects of balneal treatment are known by 67% of the total number of patients in public hospitals and 74% of the patients in private hospitals (p = 0.143), these ones following the medical recommendations. A percentage of 63% of employees specifically require the optimisation of the research of the natural factors' effects in the patient's medical rehabilitation process (p > 0.05), and of the natural factors' use in these therapies (p < 0.05). From our study it stands out that patients have a poor knowledge regarding the effects of therapies using natural factors. Also, analysing therapists' feed-back, we noticed that they require the development of research in this field and of medical marketing in order to increase the quality of medical services.