Don’t believe the headlines

I’ve been organising some focus groups recently which looked, in part, at people’s perceptions of health services and what drives those perceptions.

One of the things we wanted to explore was whether people believe the headlines about the NHS.  We showed the groups a selection of recent headlines about health and health services.  They ranged from the fairly straight ‘NHS faces public spending cuts’  type to the ‘Bungling docs nearly killed me’ headlines, with a few good news stories about award winning nurses and new services opening to balance it out.

Almost all the groups we’ve seen so far have been fairly adamant that they don’t believe the headlines.  They recognise that headlines are, by nature, sensationalist.  They understand that stories about things going well aren’t, by definition, news.

So does this mean that we should not worry about the media so much?  There’s an often quoted statistic that around a third of the public the get their information about the NHS from people who work in it, and trust the people who work in it far more than they trust the media.  So if NHS organisations are seeking to influence public opinion and build confidence, should they focus more on communications with their own staff than they do on the media?

 If only it was that simple.

 Because while our focus group respondents claimed they aren’t influenced by the media, they clearly are.  In one group I observed, one respondent started every other point with ‘I heard on the radio this morning…’  Many also say they think they’re lucky because their experience of local services is much better that what other people get – their perception of what other people get being created by the media.  And many mimic the language of the tabloids with ‘more managers than beds’, services ‘swamped by immigrants’, and so on.  (Although the question of whether the public mimic the media, or the media reflect the language of the public, is probably best saved for another day!)

Regardless of whether the people in the research genuinely don’t realise they are being influenced by the media, or know they are but don’t feel able or willing to admit it in the group situation, the media clearly plays a significant role in driving their perceptions.

But this doesn’t mean that staff engagement might not be as important as managing the media .  Because while the sheer volume of media coverage means it is a pervasive influence on perceptions, the focus groups suggest that what staff say can have a far deeper impact. 

For example, a young pregnant woman in one group I observed had recently visited her local maternity unit.  She frequently made points starting with ‘When I visited the maternity unit, they said…’ This personal experience had filled her with trust and confidence and insulated her from recent stories of maternity bed shortages.  That single experience, where staff had taken time to talk to her, listen to her, and answer her questions, had had a far greater impact that any number of headlines ever could.  That is the kind of communication that really shapes perceptions.