Social media enabled GP practices
Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by phaedrus in Health, People, Web 2.0
In preparation for a recent visit to my new local GP in the London Borough of Camden, I decided to check opening hours and contact details online. I was surprised and interested to see that, alongside the usual information, user comments and ratings were displayed for my convenience.
In fact, through the NHS Choices website, you can now view such appraisal for any GP practice in any PCT in England, provided someone has felt the need to leave a comment (which is probably for negative reasons more often than not). If you would like to read what people in your local community have to say about the GP practice you frequent, visit the site at the link above and you can join the conversation. Or you could start by joining the conversation right here. What do you think of giving people the opportunity to leave online comments about their GP practices?
Dr Trisha Macnair
27. Aug, 2010
Biggest problem, as you point out, is that those most motivated to comment are those will a negative point to make. Also may get very positive comments from people who are just being nice. It may be hard for a casual viewer to be able to point those pints into a balanced context if they don;t know the person posting or understand the full details of their encounter with the practice.
I’ve experienced both of these in the hospital I work in – very kindly encouraging remarks from people who are just genuinely nice but from my perspective didn;t get a more than average time, and negative remarks from people who are extremely difficult customers with unreasonable expectations and who were given more time and effort from the team than could possibly be expected. We get lots of balanced comment too but you tend to take more notice of the extremes…
Phaedrus
31. Aug, 2010
Dear Trish,
Thanks very much for your comment!
I agree extreme comments are disproportionately common, and prone to being taken out of context by readers. This is, as you say, due to the tendency of an average, unmemorable trip to the GP (90+% of cases I imagine) not to motivate people to take the time to comment.
This is a good observation about the nature of social media interaction; that motives for engagement are never clear and can vary from whim or boredom to determined activism. We must therefore consider what circumstances lead someone to comment on a given page and take each comment we read with the appropriate pinch of salt.
I did not comment on the NHS Choices website following my recent run-of-the-mill experience at the GP that went smoothly with everyone being perfectly polite and helpful. Perhaps I should have…
neilcrump
05. Sep, 2010
The good thing about the NHS Choices GP practice feedback form is that it encourages feedback in three areas: (1) What I like (2) What could be improved (3) Anything else to add. So while I totally agree with Dr Macnair that the dissatisfied are always more likely to comment, the structure of the comments functionality does encourage a bit more of a 360 degree perspective. As the saying goes:”Every cloud does have a silver lining”.