Professional NHS communicators have become more influential and have developed an enhanced strategic role during the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research involving over 150 NHS professional communicators.

84% of respondents said professional communicators had become more influential during the early stages of the pandemic with communication increasingly being recognised as a vital strategic function. They reported being “more involved in helping to inform and shape organisational decision making” and of getting “a seat at the top table and a more strategic role”.

The research was conducted in May and June of this year by the Centre for Health Communication Research at Bucks New University in conjunction with NHS Providers and NHS Confederation. It included NHS communicators from across the country and from all types of NHS organisation including hospital trusts, ambulance trusts, health commissioners and health regulators.

In addition to looking at the developing role of communicators the research explored the question of the centralised “command and control” of local NHS communication. A number of respondents criticised the way in which “command and control” had been applied and complained that it took too long to sign off proposed communication initiatives.

John Underwood, director of the Centre for Health Communication Research, said:

“If there needs to be a centralised command and control approach to communication – and, in a national emergency, there does need to be such an approach – its recent application should be reviewed to determine how in future it might be applied with the wider support of senior NHS communicators in frontline NHS organisations. This is particularly important given the possibility of further waves of coronavirus infection. And the NHS should explore what more could be done to ensure that frontline NHS communicators are alerted to changes in national messaging as quickly as possible and that requests to proceed with local communication initiatives are processed more rapidly.”

Other key findings from the survey include…

• A strong feeling that during the pandemic there has been less bureaucracy across the NHS with little resistance to change, greater flexibility and an ability for people to adapt quickly. Respondents wrote of, “tearing down barriers, doing things in days that would previously take years” and the development of a “'just get it done' attitude which has meant decisions can be made quickly and efficiently”. 82% of communicators said that during the pandemic management decision-making had been significantly faster with fewer unnecessary meetings and the abandonment of “pointless or aimless projects”.
• Professional communicators also felt the pandemic had triggered a strong wave of transformative innovation across the NHS with video conferencing, private staff Facebook groups, team collaboration software, video shot on smart phones, secure clinical messaging platforms and live streaming of events on YouTube all becoming commonplace across the NHS.