The brief
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUH) is preparing to open the new National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) on its Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate site, near Loughborough, in 2025. The state-of-the-art facility will help around 750 people from across the East Midlands recover from serious injuries each year, and will be the national centre for rehabilitation research and innovation, as well as training and education.
The Trust asked for MIH’s help to ensure senior members of the NRC’s clinical and leadership teams were confident and capable spokespeople equipped to promote the amazing new facility and the work it will deliver within, as well as being fully prepared for the inevitable media scrutiny the project will attract.
Working with the NUH communications team and calling on the media experience and expertise within the MIH team, we were uniquely placed to deliver the brief.

What we did
Tailoring our programme to the client’s needs
We created a day’s bespoke media training programme tailored to the needs of the NRC and those attending.
Understanding the media
Knowing what journalists are looking for is a crucial part of controlling the narrative during an interview. To explore this further, we shared with the NUH team some key insights into the workings of the modern media, followed by a detailed analysis of a negative broadcast news story about an NHS hospital. This exercise helped to build an appreciation among delegates of how the press sources and structures stories, as well as how interviews translate into the tone of subsequent articles and broadcasts.
NRC leaders gained a crucial insight into the strategic approach required to control the media narrative, including the importance of delivering and reinforcing key messages.
Dealing with crises in the public eye
An important part of media training involves preparing for the worst. In the healthcare sector in particular, there is always a possibility that leaders will have to deal with sensitive, and often tragic, events. Equipping them to strike the right tone and deliver key messages with confidence was therefore a major focus of this training.
We came to the session armed with a series of fictional but credible scenarios relevant to the NRC and the patients it will serve. Delegates had previously been asked to specify their area of expertise, how comfortable they felt when dealing with the media and the level of challenge they needed - that allowed us to tailor bespoke scenarios for each individual.
The NRC team were given time to discuss interview strategies and develop their key messages before facing the ‘television’ cameras. We also conducted a series of staged radio interviews, before delegates were put through their paces in mock print media interviews.
Controlling the narrative and avoiding negative headlines
A feedback session, which involved replaying and critiquing the interviews, helped to inform participants what they had done well, while constructively highlighting any areas for improvement. This included sharing the kind of headlines their interviews might have elicited in the real world. Delegates received feedback on how clearly they had projected their key messages, their body language, the appropriateness of their tone and whether they had been ‘tripped up’ by any particularly thorny questions, or deliberate ‘traps’.
The result
Feedback received from the NRC team was overwhelmingly positive, with every participant commenting on how enjoyable and interesting their experience had been. Most importantly, each delegate reported feeling significantly more confident and capable in facing the media, armed with the practical techniques they had learned during the day.
They were given copies of their on-camera and radio interview recordings, so they could reflect further on their learnings and experience.
As always with our media training courses, the skills gained by delegates are transferrable across many day-to-day activities, such as presenting reports in meetings or communicating important messages when bidding to win the hearts and minds of others.

“What a brilliant yet challenging day! I feel my confidence with media interviews is hugely increased after completing the training, thank you.”
Unnamed delegate from NUH who took part in media training day