Survey results drive changes to Staff Bulletin

Thanks to everyone who completed our Staff Bulletin readership survey. We received feedback from 532 readers, both online and in print – our best response so far!

Those who answered the survey were:

• Internal medical staff members – 70.91%
• Community medical staff members – 15.07%
• Alumni – 10.17%
• Emeritus/retired – 2.45%
• Trainees – 1.51%
• Other (nurse practitioners, pharmacists, researchers, etc.) – 5.46%

The majority of people say they prefer to read Staff Bulletin online (65.47%). Compared to our 2014 readership survey, this is a decline from the 76.26% who said they wanted Staff Bulletin in a digital format.

Conversely, the number of readers who prefer print has risen from 23.75% in 2014 to 34.53%. The majority of this group are internal medical staff members (54.64%) who outnumber print-preferring community physicians (24.04%), alumni (15.85%) and emeritus (4.37%) combined.

Overall, 7.94% say they read Staff Bulletin cover to cover, while 21.36% read most of the articles. Some (10.40%) say they only read one or two articles in each issue, and 46.12% say they skim the headlines and read an article in most issues. Roughly 14% say they don’t read Staff Bulletin at all.

Those who prefer Staff Bulletin in print read it more thoroughly than those who read it online. Here’s how they compare:

Just over 43% say they would continue reading Staff Bulletin if it were no longer offered in their preferred format, while 47.35% were unsure. Almost 9.5% said they would stop reading it.

The top-three reasons people read Staff Bulletin are to learn about:

• Cincinnati Children’s operational information – 73.31%
• Staff changes/departures – 39.84%
• Healthcare industry news – 29.68%

Recommendations

Most of the comments about Staff Bulletin were positive, indicating that it is meeting the needs of the majority of readers. However, there are opportunities for improvement:

• Since more than one-third of readers prefer to receive hard copies of Staff Bulletin, we will continue to print it. In the new year, we will redesign the print version to freshen the look and make it easier to read.
• A recurring theme in the open-ended question about how to improve Staff Bulletin was the “ocean of emails we receive daily about things that are not relevant or of no interest to me.” To address this, we will explore moving the online version of Staff Bulletin to a new platform that will offer readers the option of personalizing their reading experience. This includes choosing the types of articles that interest you most and what day and time you’d like to receive it.
• We will also explore ways to integrate social media with the communication tools we are already using.

Our goal is to provide communications in ways that are most accessible and meaningful to you. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please send them to staffbulletin@cchmc.org.

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