THE ambulance service is staging a week-long social media takeover - by  letting patients share their experiences first-hand.

From Monday to Sunday next week, patients will give their own accounts of the care they received from paramedics.

The ambulance service will also be giving an insight into its patient services and the feedback about staff and volunteers in clinical teams.

These teams help process information, feedback, and serious incidents which further improve the patient experience and development of staff and volunteers.

Staff stories will also be shared during the takeover which readers can follow on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Sandy Brown, director of Nursing and Clinical Quality, said: “This is the first patient takeover week we’ve done, and we want to highlight the significant work done to help patients and their families feedback to the service, what we do with the information, and share first-person perspectives on care and improving services.

“Without knowing about patient experiences, it is harder to make decisions about how we progress – so the more we know, the more it can inform the training, development and education of our teams and the modelling of our service to enhance learning.

“We hope people take time to share the content and consider contacting us if they’ve needed to use the ambulance service recently, and thank everyone who takes the time to do this already.”

The Trust will be using #patienttakeover on social media platforms to promote the week and all of its content.