The East Midlands Ambulance Service Communications team have been announced winners of the #flufighter award for digital and social media category at the NHS Employers annual national flu fighter awards this week.
The NHS Employers press release below gives full details of their success.
Left to Right: Melanie Wright, EMAS Deputy Director of Communications & Engagement; Teresa Chinn MBE, @WeNurses; Daniel Mortimer, Chief Executive of NHS Employers; Emily Dunn, EMAS Media Officer and Rebecca Long, EMAS Communications & Engagement Support Officer.
Melanie Wright, Deputy Director of Communications and Engagement at EMAS said:
We took a new approach to our flu campaign this year and used the skills and talents in our Communications team and barbershop choir to produce a catchy song and video to tackle and bust flu myths and encourage more people to get protected. Colleagues were invited to post their #flufighterface pictures on social media after having the jab and we were delighted when other NHS colleagues picked up our hashtag and joined in with the campaign.
Our successful social media campaign complimented the work of our HR and clinical teams leading the EMAS vaccination programme. Together we were able to reach more staff and saw vaccination uptake increase by 7 per cent in 2014/15.
We’re delighted to receive this national award and recognition.”
[Press Release from NHS Employers]
East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust was among six winners today at the annual national NHS flu fighter awards.
The panel of judges, including the editor of Nursing Times magazine Jenni Middleton, said that the team’s remarkable efforts will be promoted across the country to inspire similar work.
The awards are part of the NHS flu fighter campaign run by NHS Employers, which has helped increase the number of frontline NHS staff having flu vaccinations by 182,000 since it began in 2011.
The East Midlands team won in the ‘#flufighter award for digital and social media’ category against stiff competition from throughout England and Wales.
Judges noted that the communications team decided that a new approach was needed to tackle and bust myths. They did this by asking their barbershop choir to write and record a song to educate staff about the dangers of flu. They produced an accompanying video that inspired the #FluFighterFace campaign – you can watch that here.
The campaign was launched at a board meeting where executive and non-executive directors had their flu jabs and pulled a #FluFighterFace. The images were posted on Twitter and staff were encouraged to have the jab and post their pictures. By having coordinated local flu teams and a successful social media campaign, the trust was able to reach more staff and saw vaccination uptake increase from 41.8 per cent in 2013/14 to 49.2 per cent in 2014/2015.
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, presented the award and said:
This team has done fantastic work to help make the NHS an even safer place for staff, patients, and anyone they come into contact with. More than a million people use the NHS every 36 hours and many can be very vulnerable to flu. So it’s great that the majority of NHS staff find time in their busy days to seek out these voluntary vaccinations.”
There have been year-on-year increases in NHS staff flu vaccinations since flu fighter launched nationally in 2011. At the end of the last winter 541,000 (54.9 per cent) of frontline NHS staff were choosing to be vaccinated, compared with 359,000 (34.7 per cent) in 2010/11- the winter before the national campaign began.
The vaccinations are not mandatory but help to protect staff, their friends, family and patients from flu. flu fighter provides information and resources to help the NHS promote vaccinations locally and make them more convenient to have.
More details are at www.nhsemployers.org/flufighter, #flufighter and www.facebook.com/nhsflufighter.
