Nationwide emergency departments have a challenge on their hands: Healthcare professionals are being run off their feet due to people presenting with concerns that are not an emergency and should instead be addressed by a general practitioner or by taking over-the-counter medication.
There has been a collection of campaigns run by the health authorities of different states and territories to encourage people to consider whether something is an emergency before deciding to visit an emergency department. Some have taken the route of directing people towards other services, such as Health Direct, to decide whether an illness or injury requires emergency attention, or providing checklists or questions to ask instead.
Canberra’s Health Services has taken a different approach. They recently created a video called “Stop! Is it An Emergency?” and posted it on its social media accounts, but the video has since been deleted after backlash.
So why was this video so controversial?
The video stated that not all emergency department visits end up needing a hospital admission: no problems there. However, the examples that they chose to reference when listing concerns that don’t warrant a hospital visit were two chronic health conditions: endometriosis and arthritis. The endometriosis community in particular – who have already spent years campaigning to have the illness adequately recognised by the health community – has expressed outrage over this. This is where the video quickly became a lightning rod.
One woman who saw this video and who had endometriosis was in intense 10/10 pain and did not present to the emergency department because of this video. She said she felt that she would not be welcome and wouldn’t be given appropriate support because of the video calling out those who suffer from chronic conditions. In the end, she passed out from her pain.
As someone who has had multiple organs removed as a result of this condition, I can understand the frustration over this uninformed advice.
The biggest problem here isn’t that it has offended some of their audience. The problem is that this ‘advice’ is unhelpful and reductive – particularly when it was designed to change behaviour.
So what did this video get wrong?
A few things.
It showed a lack of understanding of those particular health conditions. In the case of endometriosis, it is a chronic condition, not a broken bone. However, there can be complications and an intense level of pain at times that does warrant the help that only a hospital can give. What does someone do when this pain happens at times when only an emergency department is open? For Canberra Health Services to choose this example without qualifiers or understanding of the nuance is precipitous and pardon the pun, inflammatory.
Not to mention, irresponsible. There are undoubtedly going to be people who should be seeking emergency assistance but choose not, all because Canberra Health Services didn’t qualify their advice with appropriate information that would mean that people are safe.
Not only did it lack the detail that was necessary to qualify the examples that they chose, but it didn’t suggest what the alternative avenue was for receiving medical support for those people.
Yes, there is a need to focus on life-threatening injuries, but emergency departments are there for emergencies. Rather than call out individual conditions, what would be much more helpful is to provide some education about what symptoms qualify as an emergency, rather than what health conditions qualify you to present to an emergency department.
Social media videos cannot be an impetuous version of your marketing – they need to be as considered as any other form of communication.
The video has since been removed and an apology has been shared. However, trust has now been broken. Rather than attend Canberra Hospital, those who live in the ACT have said that they are now considering driving to hospitals in NSW because they’re not confident that they will be welcomed and receive appropriate attention.
What’s the lesson here? Believe it or not, the lesson isn’t to not offend people who feel targeted, because it’s very difficult to avoid somebody feeling offended when sharing unwelcome news.
What they did wrong was not understanding the conditions they were talking about, which is disappointing given it was a health authority that shared it.
They also didn’t understand the basics of good communication skills.
The lesson here is that if you want someone to change their behaviour in particular, then your communication needs to go through the following filters:
- How will this information be received?
- Am I sharing enough information for this to be well understood or am I going to provoke more questions than answers, and cause outrage rather than behaviour change?
- Am I providing a source of information for those who do have further questions, may not understand what has been shared, or may feel like what I’m asking of them is not possible and therefore may need other options? Have I shared that information with them and made it easy for them to understand that?
- Do I speak with empathy? This includes understanding the experiences of those who you’re speaking with.
- Have I consulted with those who have different perspectives, expertise and human experience? And has that informed what I’ve shared?
- Have I kept the main thing the main thing? In this case, name-dropping conditions became the focus rather than the main message. Using those conditions as examples was not necessary to get the message across and it created a distraction. It also meant that if your condition was not mentioned as an example, you may believe that your condition was exempt from their caution, which defeats the purpose.
- Finally, when wanting to create behaviour change, you need to give people options. People are much more likely to receive what you’re saying well if they’re given a choice. It also becomes far more realistic to incorporate your desired change into their circumstances if you have provided alternatives. This was not provided in this video.
These steps are relevant to all forms of communication, especially where you want to change somebody’s behaviour.
Canberra Health Services has some repairs to do now. They would do well to rethink how they communicate their message that not all emergency department visits need hospital admission. That’s an important message, but how you say it makes all the difference. To rebuild trust, they need to create helpful resources that do this in a much more considered, thorough, and thoughtful way.
When faced with a communications crisis, Pure Public Relations can help your business craft professional, considered messaging that protects your reputation. Contact us today for your free consultation.
