It’s important that you know what’s happening across our trust and wider health and care system, and how the work you do is helping to provide safe care for all.
During July our communications team reviewed the ways we share important news and updates with you. Thank you to the 323 people who spoke to the team about what they like and dislike about our communication channels, how they want to be kept up-to-date with important news, and what things we can do better.
Most people said that they get their news from their managers, and ICONews, and email is the best way to share news and updates.
People also like reading ICONews, our staff bulletin published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but want fewer editions and more stories about what colleagues who are not based at Torbay Hospital are doing.
Screensavers are also popular and an effective way of sharing information – particularly with our ward staff who watch them during their shift – but they want them to be on screen for longer and signpost to more information.
People have, however, fallen out of love with our vlogs, which were a really popular and effective way of communicating with you during the pandemic, but most people now seem to skip the play button and head straight to reading the summary notes published in ICONews.
We’ve listened to what you told us, and during the next few months we will make some big changes to the way we communicate with you. From next Monday 11 September, we will:
- stop recording our three times a week vlog – today’s will be the last one. We’ll still record vlogs if we know that’s the best way to tell you something. Thank you to our executives, clinicians and everyone else who’s clipped on a mic and stepped in front of the camera during the past three years; and thank you Liam and Jamie in the Digital Horizons team for recording and editing hundreds of vlogs
- Liz Davenport or another member of our executive team will write a weekly start the week message which will contain the important news you need to know every Monday
- reduce the number of editions of ICONews from three to two, and we will publish them on Mondays and Thursdays
- post more content on ICON latest news and Staff Room during the week.
Our communications team is setting up a focus group to help create a magazine-style edition of Thursday’s ICONews, which will celebrate our people, teams and services, fundraising, wellbeing and fun. We’ll publish our first edition in December. Thank you to everyone who said they would like to be a member – Lindsey and Nasib from our communications team will be in touch very soon. If you would also like to get involved, please email communications.tsdft@nhs.net
We are also running a pilot of our online Staff Room with a targeted group of people including health and care support workers, our community rapid response, workplace, and out of hours nursing teams to help us understand if this online portal is a good way to share news and messages. Thanks to everyone who’s taking part – the pilot will finish at the end of September and we will share the results with you.
Thank you again to everyone who generously gave up their time and shared their views during this review. If you have a story you think we should be telling, please email communications.tsdft@nhs.net
Thank You For Your Vote!
Sorry You have Already Voted!