Healthy Conversations

Est-ce que quelqu’un vous a jamais demandé de parler plus lent? Ever found yourself at a road sign where none of the directions seem to point towards home? Ever tried to put together the ‘easy assembly’ flat pack bedside table whilst trying to follow the accompanying twenty-page instruction manual?

Well…clearly you’d have to be multilingual in order to understand the opening to this post (unfortunately, some of us aren’t that lucky!). And it’s not just being shortsighted (and seriously needing a pair of glasses!) that accounts for having taken the wrong turning. AND, sometimes building flat pack isn’t ‘as easy as 1, 2, 3′.

The above are all obstacles that we’ve no doubt been faced with, probably on more than one occasion. However, some barriers are often not so obvious – lack of understanding is bound to arise where there’s a lack of clarity and this occurring in the online social space is no anomaly.

Today marks the start of Social Media Week – a global network of conferences which aim to connect hundreds of thousands of people every year to advance our understanding of social media’s role in society.

And so we begin…social media – the term itself is thrown around endlessly and seems to take on an eclectic mix of different meanings depending on who’s talking about what. At a basic level it encapsulates two-way communication, ie turning web-based technologies into interactive dialogue.

We all know about the huge numbers joining social networks across the globe, users having a common desire to share thoughts and seek information on topics of mutual interest within a familiar environment. As an industry, we have a responsibility to sensibly share advances across medical fields that will ultimately help improve patient care. Social networks provide us with an opportunity to more effectively communicate in a bespoke way that resonates. But when doing so, we need to step away from ambiguity and provide tailored information that is relevant, understandable and digestable to those at the receiving end, be it patients, healthcare professionals, or anyone else for that matter.

Collectively, we may be relatively new to the social media realm and still navigating our way but the basic principles of traditional communication methods (and, of course, the need to be code compliant) still apply – it’s simply our vehicle that’s novel.

So next time we put fingers to keyboard, carefully consider not only who we’re communicating with and how we can contribute but more so, the language/visual style and specific words/imagery we use to participate in discussion. Let’s leave out the need for a twenty-page instruction manual, continue to work away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach and learn from those industries that are respecting individuality and, in doing so, getting it right. To my knowledge, Starbucks have never turned away those who are partial to an extra hot, wet, soya, sugar-free vanilla latte.