By Susan Donlon, Communications team, National Screening Service
We recently presented at the 2026 International Conference on Communications in Healthcare (ICCH) which took place in Belfast from 14 to 18 September.
Our presentation focused on how we developed practical tools and supports to help staff create clearer, more consistent and more person-centred communications across the HSE National Screening Service.
We shared why this work is needed, how we approach it, what we’ve learned and the impact it is having across our organisation.
Why we prioritise clear communication
Communication plays a key role in people's experience of our screening programmes. It influences how people understand our information and make decisions about taking part in screening.
Evidence shows that clear communication improves understanding, supports people to make informed decisions about their health, helps to make health services more inclusive and accessible, and builds trust.
A practical approach to clear communication
At the conference, we shared how we developed a practical, evidence-based communications toolkit with input from our staff and our Patient and Public Partnership (PPP) representatives.
The toolkit provides staff with guidance on plain language, tone of voice, and inclusive and accessible communications. It includes examples relevant to our context in screening, demonstrating how the guidance works in practice, beyond the theory.
To support lasting change, we invested in staff training to build their capability to communicate more clearly and consistently. We developed and delivered a staff webinar and tailored workshops for our teams. The workshops focus on improving communications from a user-needs perspective and include practical learning exercises based on real communications.
Early results and impact
The presentation outlined some early results from the project, including:
- one third of staff have engaged with training
- readability scores improved during workshop exercises
- feedback from staff that the toolkit was easy to use and understand, and immediately applicable to their work
- teams adopting the toolkit in other areas of their work, including improving templates they use regularly
- consistent tone, clarity and person-centred communications reported by our PPP representatives when reviewing our information development projects.
An unexpected outcome of the project has demonstrated our leadership in clear and person-centred communication, with external organisations seeking our advice and guidance, and using our work to inform the development of their own approaches.
What we learned
We outlined our learnings, including how:
- involving staff in the development of the toolkit made it relevant to them
- training helped to turn guidance into practice
- the toolkit and training have helped to increase staff confidence and capability to write more clearly and improve consistency.
The presentation concluded that by combining practical tools, training and measurement, healthcare organisations can create more sustainable improvements in how people experience care through clear communication.
Next steps
Our focus now is on continuous improvement through staff feedback, toolkit updates and ongoing training and support. We’re also beginning to explore how generative AI might support clearer communication while keeping people at the centre of the process.