It’s back: 24 hours in EoE

Our successful Twitterthon to highlight the demand and activity on emergency services during Black Friday is back – and we need your support.

If you use Twitter and can follow the commentary with #24HoursinEoE on @EastEnglandAmb  from 7am tomorrow (Friday 16^th) through to 7am Saturday, please like and retweet what you can so your own followers get a flavour of life for our emergency response colleagues.

Members of the Communications team will be in the three control rooms sequentially between 7am-7pm, followed by a rideout with a Peterborough ambulance crew for a 12-hour shift.

By using Twitter, our 18,500+ followers – which are a mix of former patients, general public, organisations, MPs, NHS partners etc. -  will get the feel for what 999 calls we receive over 12 hours, and then the response aspect during the ride out. We run regular rideouts this way which many of you follow and it’s the closest we can get people on social media to imagine what it is like for us to respond to the 3,000+ calls we get each day.

Head of Communications Joy Hale said: “This is part of our Wise Up For Winter campaign, which complements the NHS Stay Well messaging. In an ideal world, we’d invite every person to EOCs and the back of ambulances to better understand what we do and how, but reality is of course very different.

“The media can go so far in trying to get this across through reporting their own rideouts, but we find social media the ideal next best thing as it’s live and interactive and gets people talking to us and one another about demand, activity and health care overall.”

We’re urging all staff and volunteers to help their family and friends become winter wise by using the advice, guidance and materials you can find here, and next week we’re also highlighting the ‘have fun, be safe’ pre-Christmas and New Year messages for party-goers.

Anyone is welcome to support the communications team in helping us get the #winterwise messages out there – just email communications@eastamb.nhs.uk for more information, or to suggest ideas you have. You can also post a comment below.

Published 15th December, 2016