Thursday 4 December 2014

Social Media and Health & Social Care

I've been an advocate for social media for quite some time now, ok I'm maybe not on as much as some others, my fault, but I do my best...honest!

My meanderings on social media did get me some attention though, I was lucky enough to make contact with Dr Steven Kinnear on Twitter, I would go so far as to describe Steven as a Twitter and Social media evangelist.

I had enthused about some events that Steven was facilitating over the last year, mostly an introduction to Northern Ireland of the Health & Social Care Changeday concept and his work with #dNav, a device for assisting people with mostly Type 2 Diabetes, who were struggling to make sense of the control of their condition by injection of insulin.

So my card was well and truly marked, I was a disciple of Social Media!

Today, that is Thursday 4th of December 2014, I had the privilege of attending the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Social Media Conference or #NIHSCMConf for those into their hashtags, I recommend looking at the hashtag if you can and seeing what was said, it was a truly social conference with one of the largest inter-acters on the day being Bernadette Keefe who happened to be in New York rather than Belfast at the time!

What was so important about a conference in Belfast on how Health & Social Care staff could enhance their service delivery? Well everything!

How brilliant that Northern Ireland is willing to look into and potentially be a leader in developing models of interaction between health bodies, not only with each other, but also with their service users.

One important quote on the day though came from Stephen Powell - Social Media is a broadly free and simple communication tool - how very true - alas many trusts fear it - but why should they - they should in fact reward it - a health and social care organisation must look at its Mission Statement, and many might need to think about updating theirs - my own Trust, the South Eastern Health & Social Care Trust has the following  'Vision & Values' - at its core is the following 'provide person centred, safe and effective care'.

Today and tomorrows patients use Social Media, if you want to stay 'patient centred' then you need to be ready and willing to interact with patients how they want to be interacted with.

Its the 'safe' bit that I personally believe worries many, and it should, but its not insurmountable.

A tweet I received during the conference reminded me that social media is good, but there is still a place for traditional face-to-face - and I agree, social media is only one door into a world of engagement, the more doors that are opened the brighter and the cleaner the air becomes.

All communication be it bad news, good news or simply a bit of trumpet blowing is a positive thing, for in silence does only fear, doubt and error grow.