#MentalPatient – where it all started and what it all means

#MentalPatient – where it all started and what it all means

by | Sep 27, 2013 | mental health, social media, What I love about Twitter | 0 comments

Where it all started When I sneaked a peak at my emails (ironically in the middle of a Time to Change Leeds steering group meeting) and clicked on an Asda link from one of our consultant psychiatrists, @nuwandiss, my heart started palpitating. I couldn’t believe the image in front of me. Surely this Halloween costume was a wind up? But the URL was legit. I shared it with colleagues around the table. We all gasped. My first thought was that it had to come down quickly – it was going to upset and offend so many people. Asda’s headquarters are in Leeds and Dom, Head of Social, has been fantastic in supporting myself and my comms team in our use of social media. He’s even blogged about mental health taboos himself – you can read it here.  So I sent him a DM. Dom got it straight away and put things in motion to get it taken down. Unfortunately for Asda the web page remained up. Going viral Later that morning our chief executive (who also received the email) tweeted Asda with the link, and a response came quickly: ‘Thanks for your feedback. We agree. Our George colleagues had already picked up on this and are taking action. #timetochange’. There was no further interaction until the ChrisButlernhs tweet was re-tweeted by MrsGracePoole in the evening and at this point the topic went rapidly viral over the next 24 hours, resulting in prime time national TV and radio coverage plus print media the next day. A review using the analytics engine Topsy shows that during the twenty four hour period from 12am on 26 September there were 22,371 tweets mentioning the word Asda, compared to...
Welcome to #DigiHealthLab

Welcome to #DigiHealthLab

by | Sep 21, 2013 | #mHabitat | 0 comments

How can people use digital as part of their recovery and to live well? Can digital play a part in improving people’s experience and outcomes? Can digital increase choice and flexibility in mental health services? Does it have the potential make practitioner’s work more straightforward? Can digital enable services to work more smartly? These are the sorts of questions we are going to be exploring over the next year in #DigiHealthLab an initiative funded by the NHS in Leeds to test out the use of digital tools in a range of mental health services. Learning from the fabulous lab approach developed by Innovation Labs , co-production will be at the heart of this initiative – that is, both the process and the results will be generated by and for people who use services and practitioners, pulling in help and expertise that we need along the way. I will be directing #DigiHealthLab with support from project manager, Nikoo Atraki, and with a small group to keep us on track and steer us along the way. Our first job is to make sense of what is already out there that we can learn from – if you have anything to share do get in touch! We’ll be keeping a record of the journey on this blog so we can share our insights with others. If you are interested in playing a part in #DigiHealthLab then please get in touch via the comments section of this blog or @VictoriaBetton @NikooAtraki on...
Be brave! NHS Trusts and social media

Be brave! NHS Trusts and social media

by | Sep 14, 2013 | NHS stuff, social media | 4 comments

This week @gopaldass and I ran a workshop with an NHS Foundation Trust Board of Directors in the Midlands – sharing our learning and thinking about the opportunities and challenges of social networking from personal, professional and organisational perspectives. It struck me that we are so used to an NHS discourse around risk, compliance and assurance that we unconsciously and perhaps even automatically frame a conversation about social networking in this way. It is of course right to carefully consider the challenges and risks of social media and it would be erroneous not to. But it can too easily sabotage an appreciation of the potential of social media to provide a space for more transparent and open dialogue. That’s why I was so delighted when one participant shouted out ‘we just need to be brave!’ and with this one comment turned our discussion towards the exciting possibilities afforded by social networking. Now that for me is leadership – a willingness to take a risk and innovate, try something new and experiment without knowing where it might lead. Is your organisation prepared to be brave?...
Twitter – essential leadership tool or optional extra?

Twitter – essential leadership tool or optional extra?

by | Sep 6, 2013 | NHS stuff, social media | 2 comments

This week I heard two very different takes on the role of Twitter in the context of leadership: An NHS graduate trainee happened to mention that the Leadership Academy encouraged her and her cohort to get on Twitter. The scheme has its own Twitter account @NHSGradScheme and a hashtag for the cohort #NHSgrad2013. A senior manager happened to mention in a leadership workshop that Twitter and blogging wasn’t for them. I was struck by this contrast. At one end of the spectrum an expectation set that future NHS leaders engage with social networking. At the other end of the spectrum an implied view that social networking is optional and can be given a miss. So if we are expecting our future leaders to participate then should we also be expecting our established leaders to do the same? And what are the risks for those who decide to opt out – what do they lose and what might they gain? I guess there was a time when it was optional to have an email account in an office job – and then the moment arrived when it became a ubiquitous communication tool – a tipping point occurred when it became the norm for day-to-day communication. Of course now email is becoming rather passé and no doubt Twitter will too in due course. So perhaps the more important question is – do leaders have a responsibility to continually develop themselves, keep abreast of new ways in which their staff and clients/customer communicate, understand the opportunities and manage the risks? I would argue that they do. I wonder if the time will arrive soon...