Posted on 30-January-2014   by Dee Ward

The 2013 IPS Team Award Winners, NHS Coventry & Warwickshire, Describe How Social Media Inspired and Motivated Their Work

We sponsored the 2013 IPS Award for the “Team of the Year” which went to the Infection Prevention and Control Team, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (the team’s representative Kate Prevc accepted the award on behalf of the team).

NHS Warwickshire & Coventy - IPS Award 2013 winners

I spoke with Kate to find our more about the award and what winning meant to her and her team. Also – as you know social media is one of Daniels’ communication passions when it’s comes to engaging with our own customers and I wondered if and how it played a part in this team’s work.

Kate shared that social media had been pivotal in their work and definitely played a part in being an inspiration to her and her team. Their experience has been almost entirely positive – the staff love to see the pictures of themselves being congratulated for the great work they are doing and Kate laughed and said that if they’d taken a picture and forgotten to upload it – they would (quite rightly) get a phone call.

Social media helped in promoting positive competition in the campaign they were running and personally…it helped enormously with some of the 3am doubts. Kate said that when changing working practice there were times when her and her team would question what they were doing. But then…it made all the difference when another Trust or person they admire gave positive feedback (through Twitter) and it really helped and motivated the team.

Kate said that she believed that the power of Twitter was especially apparent at the 2013 IPS Conference. She said that genuinely felt that so many people already felt like friends – because they had already connected and communicated on Twitter. It made the UK and Ireland community of IPS feel like a supportive group of close friends and this was reflected at the gala dinner when the Yorkshire branch of the IPS as a whole did their team “shimmee” as they received the award. Kate and her team will not forget that moment and that was entirely due to Twitter.

Our customers, staff and colleagues in the healthcare field know that we at Daniels are driven to help support the professional infection prevention community into the world of social media. I spent most of 2013 travelling around the UK and Ireland sharing our social media story and the difference it has made to our business. I was ever so pleased to hear Kate say that she did feel like communication has always been an issue in the NHS – but social media gives us a way to vastly improve it. She expressed that it is the future and we, as a healthcare sector, should embrace it. She quite rightly said that if nurses can’t be trusted to use social media – then surely they can’t be trusted to talk to patients? Twitter is a method of communication and that should be a nursing strength.

There you have it – another inspiring story of how social media has brought people together – all for the benefit of employee motivation…and ultimately for the businesses they work for.

If you would like to hear more about the campaign for which Kate and her team were nominated for – I’ve written a blog post to explain it in full here.

Dee is the Customer Support and Marketing Manager at Daniels. She is the key force behind a motivated and responsive team who support the Daniels customers and sales representatives day in and day out.