Use Social Media to Share your Feedback

I want to share some ideas with you about how to share your feedback with the people who will appreciate it most.

Inspired by a recent blog post from Sharon Kidd, (Patient Experience & Engagement Manager at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust) there are two really simple ways to get sharing!

The Feedback Problem

In her blog, Sharon explains that "the NHS isn’t always brilliant at sharing great feedback with frontline staff. It’s easy to get bogged down in the negative feedback. But it’s so important to boost staff morale and give them the amazing feedback they deserve."

Even though the subscription has 64 members, Sharon feels that "with all the best will, we simply can’t send the stories to everyone. Emails often don’t work because there are regular staff changes, and clinical staff often don’t get to see a PC on shift, never mind read through emails. So there’s no guarantee feedback will be seen by the people involved in the care, especially if the patient pathway has been so wide."

The Social Media Solution

"This is why sharing feedback on social media, Facebook in particular, works so well, because it’s quick, easily accessible and can be done at home or in breaks."

Facebook Group

Sharon then came up with the idea of utilising a pre-existing group to share feedback instead:"We have a closed Facebook group created specifically for ULHT nurses. There’s nearly 2,100 members of staff in the group from a total of 7,500 staff.  I realised it would be a perfect way to share the great stories on Patient Opinion, to spread some good news and to boost staff morale. This worked brilliantly, with staff commenting, liking and sharing the feedback. This means feedback reaches staff who might not otherwise usually get to see it."

Twitter & CEOs

Another of Sharon's great ideas came about after she read one of our blogs, she explains how she'd seen that "PO recently tweeted a blog from the CEO of SASH about the benefits of receiving email alerts to all stories. So, I tweeted our CEO, Jan Sobieraj to ask if he wants all alerts too. Of course, Jan was really keen, and loves the ability to be kept in the loop.  Jan now wants to be mentioned every time I tweet a PO story, not simply so that he can favourite it or retweet it, but because he wants to see it and respond to it with his views. This is such a bonus; I think it’s powerful for the public to see that the CEO is actively reading their feedback."

The Benefits

So from Sharon's experience we can see that there are loads of benefits to sharing stories this way...

• More staff can read the feedback about their service,
• Staff can read and share the feedback about themselves/their team,
• Boosts staff morale,
• Boots readership,
• Boosts transparency,
• Great to share with public,
• Gives public/authors confidence that their stories are shared with staff and appreciated

So what are you waiting for? Make a Facebook Group, get tweeting and give everyone the good news they'd love to hear!