More help needed for comms professionals working in the NHS

Antony Tiernan, director of comms for improvement and development at NHS England and NHS Improvement, is set to leave his role in August and move to the London Ambulance Service as its director of communications. Some years ago now, Mr Tiernan set up a network called NHScommsorg to support NHS communicators. It now has around 7,500 Twitter followers and a Facebook group with in excess of a thousand members.
Mr Tiernan said: “I don’t think we do enough to support people who work in comms across the NHS. If you work in some of the other professions, whether you are the medical director or the nursing director or whatever, there’s a lot of support out there for them, for their professions. I don’t think we have that for comms people. We just need to be really careful about how much money we are spending and how much time is put into that because there are apps out there. If you look at the NHS apps library, if something is already there, why would you want to create your own? I know it’s lovely to have your own hospital logo or whatever it is on it, and maybe you do localise it a bit, but just think about how much time and money you’re spending and whether in the long term you can sustain it……The last thing we want is for people leaving in their droves from these platforms… we want to use them when we want to talk to people. We can help by being good users of these platforms and telling good stories.”