Communications plan
An effective communications plan is vital for successful take up of the flu vaccination among health and social care workers. All organisations are different, so it is important to tailor your strategy to your organisation.
Public Health England and NHS England and NHS Improvement have developed health and social care worker campaign resources to help you promote flu vaccination uptake in your workplace, see the Resources page for more information.
Some things your communication plan should do:
- Keep staff updated throughout your campaign.
- Publicise flu vaccine uptake rates and the comparative performance of individual departments or sites within the organisation or locality. This could be done within the context of national targets such as CQUIN.
- Challenge misconceptions.
- Give a rationale for flu vaccination using clinical evidence for support and providing information about the effectiveness and safety of the flu vaccine.
- Promote drop in clinics and mobile vaccinations.
- Publicise board and senior members having their vaccinations.
- Use screensavers, posters, social media, email and any other channel available to you.
- Use case studies
- Use appropriate channels for your audience: local broadcast media and social media.
- Use prompts and reminders in various printed and digital formats.
- Use systems linked to named staff records to monitor uptake and to target prompts and reminders.
Consider promoting flu vaccination to front-line workers to:
- protect themselves and their families
- protect their co workers
- protect the people they care for
- meet professional expectations such as the British Medical Association’s position statement, the General Medical Council’s guidance on good medical practice and the Royal College of Nursing’s duty of care statement.