In an attempt to drum up more support and awareness of mental health and learning disabilities, Hampshire Partnership NHS trust has joined social networking site, Facebook.
Being one of the first NHS Trusts in the country to use this modern method of communication, Hampshire Partnership Trust created the Facebook group with the idea to raise support for their application to become a Foundation Trust.
Terry Rydzynski, Web Development Manager for the Trust, said “The viral nature of Facebook means that it’s possible for the group to effectively promote itself. We set the group up as a way to recruit members to our Trust and hoped that people may help to spread the word through Facebook. We also use it as a tool now to allow staff to communicate among themselves and it allows us to follow these conversations so we can spot potential issues earlier.”
If the application to become a Foundation Trust is successful it would mean that local people can get involved, voice their opinions about the Trust and say what needs to be done to improve it.
The Facebook group also stands the purpose to raise awareness of mental health, learning disabilities and social care services, across Hampshire and reduce the stigma that is often associated with these subjects.
With a membership of 79 the group isn’t the most highly populated on the site as you would imagine but it is early days yet. Terry explained: “We are simply experimenting with Facebook at the moment and it’s too early to determine whether it’s been successful or not. We don’t even really have a set of success criteria by which we can measure and there are likely to be more benefits/disadvantages that we simply don’t know about yet.”
chan1 Said:
on February 27, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Chan1’s Weblog Chantel Richman’s news day story.
Just another WordPress.com weblog
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Romsey hospital under-goes transformation. (news day story)
A huge transformation in Romsey hospital means that patients no longer have to be transferred to Southampton for diagnosis.
The departments for minor operations, endoscopy, out-patients and X-ray are all currently being refurbished and are due to be complete by may 2008, developing the hospital into a modern and fully equipped health care centre.
The transformation means that the departments will be able to deal with a range of aesthetic procedures, therefore putting a stop to patients travelling to Southampton General Hospital to receive treatment and be diagnosed.
Local resident Charlotte Steele commented: “ the refurbishment is a really good idea. I’m an asthma sufferer and I’ve been transferred to Southampton a few times to be seen properly. Thankfully I wont have to do that once the job is done.”
Being able to make appointments, receive treatment and be diagnosed in Romsey hospital obviously saves time and money for the patients, as well as being a huge improvement in local Health care as a whole.
The out-patient department will also be extended to include extra examination and consultation rooms to ensure that patient’s privacy and dignity is kept in tact.
Ann Smith, director of operations for Hampshire Primary Care Trust told the press: “ We’re really pleased with the progress being made at Romsey, and hope local people will be pleased with their newly re-vamped hospital”.
winchestertutor Said:
on February 29, 2008 at 3:05 pm
This is a good story – genuinely inteesting that they should be trying to use facebook in this way. Also mention of facebook will connect with a lot of readers.
It is a bit of a puff – it would have been stronger with a quote from a critic of the plan, to balance it. Who could you have gone to, to get a critical quote?
The intro is more of a TV news “and finally intro” – it is a bit to commenty for a news story; though you will see intros like that in print from time to time. But it is not the standard way of doing it. As you will see from reading the papers, moist intros are pretty standard WWWWW summary intros (80 – 90 poecent of them). Can you blog examples and the diffferences betweens newspaper and radio / TV intros. That would be useful.
The quote from Terry is OK but needs crunching up a bit – see ‘quotology’ as discussed in my comments on all other blogs.
So this is a good piece of writing, but it is not in struct news style. You can only get to know about news style by reading teh appers each day, and combining that with teh reading of the set texts and, in additiin, the one I also recommend which is Harry Evans – essential english.
Yrs Chris Horrie