The BTA places a huge importance on communication – and the quality of our communication. We communicate with the tinnitus community in many ways, using both traditional media and the “new media” – such as this blog. And it’s my job to make sure we are doing this effectively.

And it’s a job I love. Every day is different, and there is always something interesting to do, whether it is discussing ideas for articles for Quiet (our members’ quarterly magazine), following the discussions on Facebook, or writing a news story.

Last week was a particularly busy week, though! Firstly, I was preparing Quiet to go to the printers. As editor of the magazine, I have to make sure it contains the latest news on tinnitus, research news and trial information, stories of member’s experiences, information about support groups and contacts as well as details of BTA meetings and events. I collect all this on an ongoing basis, but of course it all has to be pulled together into a magazine that not only is going to be interesting to read, but which looks good. I use a program called InDesign to layout the magazine, and the task is a combination of an English assignment, a jigsaw puzzle and Tetris! Somehow, everything fits in (eventually!) and hopefully any spelling mistakes picked up and eliminated. We had quite a fun debate over the cover image … one person in the team thought it rather creepy but the rest of us love it.

Fortunately, Quiet was fairly straightforward to put together this issue despite having to move a couple of pages round, because we had rather an important event happening last week: we were being assessed for accreditation under The Information Standard. The Information Standard is a new scheme set up by the Department of Health so that accredited organisations can put a quality mark on their information materials and readers will know that it is from a reliable and trustworthy source.

Here at the BTA, we are very proud of the quality of our information but we are not complacent, and so we decided to apply for Information Standard accreditation. This meant looking really closely at every aspect of how – and why – we produce information and producing a very robust procedure to ensure that our information is always going to reflect the best evidence available.

If I say that the assessment took two days, you can imagine the level of detail that we had to go into. Although the assessor was very nice, she was also very thorough and it was rather how I imagine being cross examined in court must feel like. I felt like a wrung out rag at the end of it! We have one more hurdle to cross and then we will find out if we can use the Information Standard quality mark on our leaflets … I think the phrase is quietly confident, and I have to thank everyone – the Trustees, Professional Advisers’ Committee, authors, staff and the Readers Panel – who have committed themselves wholeheartedly to gaining (hopefully!) the Information Standard.