Scottish Labour says we should scrap NHS Communication teams

Jackie Baillie MSP, Labour health spokesperson in Scotland, started the week by attacking the expenditure on communications teams within the NHS in Scotland. She called for the funds to be used to create more nursing posts.  Of course the media love this type of criticism of public relations and off the story ran.

Ah well, it was to be expected. The usual attack on communications when politicians want to grab some headlines but it is always disappointing for the PR professional.

The NHS is no different to any other organisation that has to communicate with its users, with its staff and with the wider public.

These communicators are also involved in public health campaigns, and which have been proven to save money in the long-run.  Communications is a legitimate choice, a decision to invest in prevention, and it is an important element in a public health strategy.

Or to respond quickly during a pandemic, to supply the public with information about what they can do to protect themselves. And the experience of 2009 was, that in the absence of a vaccine, simple messages communicated by the NHS to change behaviour played a part in preventing the spread of the virus.

The core messages were about social distancing, and there were important campaigns run on respiratory and hand hygiene.

One of the most important messages during 2009 was, that no matter how much we have developed a National Health Service since its creation, it was still not able to prevent a pandemic.  This is a force of nature that we can expect every forty years.  Public information advice was much more useful.

Of course the irony is that the media and politicians expect someone to explain and be accountable to the public, and so someone needs to be employed to do that.   And it is this protection of reputation, the management of accountability, that politicians are so concerned about.  This is seen as spin. 

I was involved when the NHS Trusts were created, and we certainly saw an increase in communications. And in places where there were no PR officers, these tasks were taken on the clinicians. The clinicians took longer to do the role, because they were employed to be clinicians not communicators. So eventually it became there full-time job. That is not a great use of resources.

So we have seen our regular attack on communication expenditure in the NHS. 

We can expect it to come around again, but hopefully not too soon.