Occupational Therapy News OTnews February 2019_Joomag | Page 39

SOCIAL MEDIA FEATURE
Start small,
think big,
and build
a following
A group of occupational therapists have been using
social media to promote the ways occupational
therapy can help people living with dementia.
Here they explain how
‘It was with great trepidation and an overwhelming sense of
responsibility that the first tweet was composed and posted,’ they
commented.
Another participant highlighted that: ‘I was apprehensive at first,
but have really enjoyed my weekly tweets and supporting others in
their tweets. I feel I am more confident in my tweeting but there is
still so much to learn.’
So with a push and shove in the right direction, sometimes
uphill, the group soon became proficient enough to tweet relevant
and expert practical hints and tips to people living with dementia
develop through clinical experience.
We made sure that the tweets were written in everyday language
and were the sort of advice we would be sharing with the people
we work with.
The project started in January 2018 with no followers, but by
November 2018, this had increased to 1,473 followers and it is still
growing.
Key learning
next steps. We were encouraged to ask questions as this was all
part of the learning and reassured that no question was a stupid
question.
Some of the process change discussion included: Does it
make a difference if we tweet daily? Does it make a difference
if we tweet at different times of the day? Do we increase our
followers if we tweet at the weekends? Do we have greater
engagement if we have themed tweets?
We also looked at our Twitter analytics, which was a
combination of our daily, weekly and monthly qualitative and
quantitative data.
Our initial run charts demonstrated an increase in the number
of people engaging with us and what was particularly valuable
were the comments we received from followers.
One person said: ’Thanks… great job with practical
suggestions for improving the quality of life for those with
dementia. I am putting them to work with my loved one
#livingwithdementia.’
‘Impressions’ was a new term for most of us, and this refers to
As a group, we had clear leadership from the AHP consultant, a
strong vision and a methodological framework. We used a variety
of improvement tools, including a project charter and driver diagram
and methods such as Force Field analysis and Plan, Do, Study, Act the amount of times a tweet is viewed and interacted with.
The top tip of the week would vary from week to week and we
were encouraged to learn and grow and not to judge. As a group
we grew to be proud of the account and of our joint efforts in
(PDSA) cycles.
Due to geographical constraints (as we were spread across four
NHS boards) we developed a weekly huddle. This was in the form
of a weekly teleconference call.
The weekly huddle was extremely useful and we were able
to share our experiences that week, gain support and plan our bringing our valuable occupational therapy self-management hints
and tips into the public domain.
Method and findings
We initially started tweeting one tweet a day, increasing this
gradually to three. However, we quickly realised that by increasing
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