Defining Hospital Culture

The definition of hospital culture shouldn’t be infinite and boundless. Some Chinese scholars understand hospital culture as being both a generalized and a narrowed concept. The generalized hospital culture is “the sum of certain material wealth and spiritual wealth created by the hospital’s subjects and objects” during its long medical practice. This is a concept easy to explain but hard to explain clearly. The narrow concept refers to implicit culture, i.e. the values imprinted with the distinct characteristics of a hospital developed during the long-term medical activities and recognized and observed by all employees. It is the sum of the hospital’s operating standards, management style, spirit, moral codes and development goals. This concept categorizes the hospital culture in ideology. However, both generalized and narrowed definitions deviate far away from “patient-oriented” nature of hospitals. All hospitals in the world are built to treat patients. A hospital would be useless if it fails to serve patients. Thus, hospital culture construction must highlight the core of serving patients, and all research and practices should be carried out based on the “patient-oriented” value.