Heartbeat: ‘Help Us, Help You’ this winter

December 16, 2019

If you are active on social media you may have noticed we’re supporting the national campaign ‘Help Us, Help You’ run by NHS England, NHS Improvement and Public Health England. This is their overarching NHS winter pressures campaign. It’s designed to help the public understand how they can stay well this winter and access appropriate services.

It also aims to educate people on how to access emergency services appropriately. This is vital at a time of increased pressure on our emergency front doors at City and Sandwell. Amandeep Tung, General Manager in Emergency Care explained: “Communication is a priority when dealing with patients who use our emergency services. At a time of increased need, usually in winter, then we must communicate well with our population and those who need our help in our emergency departments.

“Setting expectations is essential to managing patients’ care. We need to ensure they understand how our service works and what their pathway will be if they need emergency treatment. We enlisted the support of our colleagues in communications who helped us design a communication tool to explain what the check-in, triage and treatment path looks like in ED. In addition to posters, we had an animation produced which now runs in the department. We are translating it into five of the most commonly spoken languages, to expand the reach of the message.”

This sits beside the national winter pressures campaign. It is delivered across a range of phases that target different audiences with different calls to action to help reduce these pressures. This includes messages about flu vaccination, contacting NHS 111, seeking advice at the first signs of a winter illness, accessing evening and weekend GP appointments and the advantages of consulting with community pharmacists.

The unifying ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaign is based on the principle of reciprocity and aims to increase peoples’ understanding of the actions they can take to help the NHS to help them.

Following the expert advice of NHS staff, people can help the NHS help them stay well; prevent an illness from getting worse; take the best course of action and get well again sooner. It is an integrated multi-channel campaign that involves advertising, partnerships, PR, social media, specific Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and disability groups’ communications.