Princess Margaret Hospital turns 100

Hi,

My name is Francess Lyons. I am currently doing my PR internship at Princess Margaret Hospital.

The PR department at PMH is split into two sections, there is the general public relations office and then there is the PMH Centenary office I am working in the Centenary office.

2009 is PMH's centenary year and for PMH is a year of celebration and reflection.

Having started my internship in early February, myself and the centenary coordinator have been extremely busy.

My first task on work placement was to put promotional posters up in every area around the hospital. There were 10 lots of 10 posters, each with a staff member on from varying departments who had their photo taken for the posters. This took me 3 days 20 rolls of tape and by the end of those 3 days I was over seeing those peoples faces!

In the Centenary year, it is an objective of the hospital to involve all the hospital staff, so along with putting up posters of fellow staff members, we sold $10 Centenary Tshirts to staff, this was a popular iniative, and we sold out of many sizes in the first day, and every Friday (Centenary T-Shirt Day), the staff are wearing them proudly.

Along with the above task, we also had the launch of the Centenary, which was held on the 8th of February. In the lead up to this, mainly my tasks included taking minutes at the final staff briefing and acting on the items brought up. I was responsible for organising and liasing with some of the people involved - Parking, security, photography. As well as helping to finalise guest lists and the event plan. The day itself was a success. We had around 200 people attend the launch including Dr Fiona Stanley, who lauched the centenary.

The Centenary Launch was a story in itself, and I was asked by the Public Relations department to do the follow up story in the internal magazine, not only this but to do a whole page on the Centenary including upcoming events, overview of launch day, and promotional material for the upcoming Centenary Ball (going to be held in August). This magazine will be printed in April, so it is quite exciting to see some of my work being published.

So far it has been an awesome internship, and I am really enjoying myself.

Francess Lyons
Curtin University
Bentley Campus