Where an inaccurate post is a clinical problem
Social media training for NHS trusts, integrated care boards and private healthcare communications teams. Patient confidentiality, clinical accuracy, staff posting under professional codes, recruitment, and correcting health misinformation without amplifying it. Half day £1,200, full day £1,800 for up to six people, excluding VAT.
What makes healthcare social media different?
The cost of being wrong. A retail brand that posts something inaccurate has a bad afternoon. A healthcare organisation that posts something inaccurate about a treatment, a service change or a symptom may influence a decision somebody makes about their health, and that is a different category of mistake entirely.
Then there is everything around it. Patients appearing in content who must have consented properly. Staff posting under professional codes that carry real consequences. Recruitment pressure in roles nobody can fill. And a steady flow of health misinformation that your audience is seeing whether you engage with it or not.
What does the training cover?
1. Clinical accuracy in the workflow
Getting clinical review into the process without it taking four days. The usual reason healthcare social is slow and dull.
2. Patients in content
Consent that stands up, confidentiality, and what happens when somebody withdraws consent after publication.
3. Staff and professional codes
What registered professionals need to understand about posting, and what the organisation should say about it. See employee training.
4. Health misinformation
When correcting helps and when it spreads the claim further. See misinformation training.
5. Recruitment
Nursing, allied health and social care. What actually persuades people to apply, which is rarely the vacancy post.
6. Service change and pressure
Winter, waiting lists and closures. Communicating bad news without losing the room.
7. Accessibility
Captions, alt text and plain English. A duty for public sector content and doubly important for health information.
8. Comments and complaints
Public threads where somebody is describing their care. See community management.
Should healthcare organisations correct misinformation?
Sometimes, and not reflexively. The judgement is whether the claim is already reaching your population, whether silence will be read as confirmation, and whether your correction will reach the same people or simply introduce the claim to a new audience.
What works better than argument is being the clearest available source before the question arises. Organisations with a habit of publishing plain, accurate, easy to share health information spend far less time firefighting than those who only appear to contradict something.
Who runs the day?
I am Chris Norton and I run most of these sessions myself. I founded Prohibition, the PR, social and content agency behind this site, I have worked in public relations for more than twenty years, and I have been running training since 2009. I co-authored Share This Too, the social media handbook published by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
The agency has worked with healthcare organisations including Lloyds Pharmacy, alongside NHS bodies and public sector clients. We are communications specialists rather than clinicians, and we are explicit about that on the day. Clinical judgement stays with your clinicians and we build the process that gets their input in quickly.
Healthcare social media questions
How much does healthcare social media training cost?
Half day £1,200 and full day £1,800 for up to six people, excluding VAT, priced by the group. Around £200 to £300 a head. Larger trusts usually want one working session for the comms team plus a shorter briefing for staff who post.
Do you understand NHS communications constraints?
Yes, and we do not pretend they are obstacles to be worked around. Clinical review, information governance and professional codes exist for reasons, and a training day that ignores them is useless to you.
Can patients appear in our content?
With properly obtained and recorded consent, and with a plan for what happens if consent is later withdrawn. We cover the communications practice. The consent framework itself belongs with your information governance team.
What should we tell staff about posting?
Something short enough that they read it. Registered professionals carry obligations under their own codes as well as your policy, and most staff policies never mention that. See employee social media training.
How do we get clinical sign off without losing days?
By agreeing in advance which categories of content need it and which do not, and by naming who can approve rather than leaving it to whoever is available. This is usually the single biggest improvement available.
Can you help with recruitment?
Yes, and it is one of the most requested blocks. What persuades a nurse or a healthcare assistant to apply is rarely the vacancy post, and we work on what actually does.
Do you work with private healthcare as well as the NHS?
Yes. The regulatory picture differs, particularly around advertising claims, and the day is shaped accordingly.
Is this clinical training?
No. It is communications training delivered by communications people. Anything requiring clinical or governance judgement goes to your own experts, and we will say so rather than guess.
Tell us what your team is being asked to communicate
Half day £1,200, full day £1,800, up to six people, excluding VAT. Delivered UK wide or online.
One of the sectors we train, alongside every social media course. Delivered UK wide or online. Last reviewed August 2026.
