Navigating Digital Communication in Public Healthcare: Public Relations Practitioners’ Account of Challenges and Opportunities

Public relations practitioners in public healthcare play a crucial role in communication and relationship management, including improved access to care, patient management, and streamlined administrative processes. By leveraging digital communication effectively, the healthcare sector can enhance overall quality and efficiency, leading to better outcomes for patients and providers alike. This study explores the perceptions of Public Relations Practitioners (PRPs) regarding the use of digital communication in South Africa’s public healthcare sector, with a focus on five public hospitals in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Qualitative findings from interviews conducted during the study reveal that PRPs face major challenges, including infrastructural limitations, digital illiteracy, budget constraints, and resistance to change. Despite these challenges, PRPs acknowledge that digital tools offer significant opportunities to enhance public healthcare communication. The study concludes that successful digital communication implementation requires investment in infrastructure, policy development, and capacity-building programmes. Communication technologies can offer significant benefits to the public healthcare sector in terms of transforming healthcare delivery, patient and stakeholder engagement, and administrative efficiency. Developments in technology have led Public Relations Practitioners (PRPs) to reshape their communication strategies and incorporate digital media or media-based technology in conjunction with existing public relations tools. This paper contributes to the scholarship of digital communication in healthcare by examining how public relations practitioners in South African public hospitals perceive and utilize digital communication tools. By focusing on PR practice within resource-constrained public hospitals in Durban, the research extends existing ICT-in-healthcare literature and public relations scholarship on digital dialogic communication.