Life at the intern's desk

Back from my holiday in Japan for my second last week at South Metropolitan Health Service (SMHS). While I was away the Fremantle Hospital Emergency Department closed which I've been told went very smoothly. Workload for the Corporate Communications has slowed in post-emergency department closure times. The first half of the week was spent returning to the internet project we picked up a few weeks ago (SMHS is moving their external corporate website to the WA Health site and updating all content).

Website content writing has been interesting. As we've been told many times during our studies, "people read differently online compared to print". Taking this into account has meant eiditing content down to sometimes a fifth of its original size. Communications departments are often responsible for the final edits and reviews of external communications, meaning sometimes we have to be pretty unforgiving with that red pen. 

Fortunately I have also been involved in the communications surrounding an upcoming event held by SMHS called Music to Open Your Mind. The event is coordinated by the Mental Health Department but part of Corporate Communication's role is to assist other departments in comms management - so in that sense it's similar to consultancy work. My supervisor liaises with the an external advertising company who consults with media outlets on the sticky end of advertising for the event. One of the media outlets we have been involved with is an Indigenous radio station in Fremantle. The station asked for a script, media release, call to action and list of ad inclusion in order of importance. The script was kept the same as last year but I worked on the other materials and they were sent off. The other day we recieved an email from the station praising how well-written and appropriate the content was, resulting in no speech-writing fee for SMHS!

But it hasn't all been fluffy emails and 3pm coffee runs. I worked at Royal Perth Hospital one day this week and the atmosphere was confronting. SMHS oversees all hospital sites in the south metro area of WA so they handle the 'corporate' or 'executive' end of communications. The hospital sites themselves have their own PR team and can be seen as the 'frontline' of Department of Health communications. Royal Perth deals with the public and media far more often, receiving several media enquiries a day regarding the condition of patients and asking for interviews. They also edit a lot of the documents from other hospital deparments, compile a quarterly hospital magazine, contribute stories to SMHS eNews etc. etc. 

I once read an article that listed PR Manager as the sixth most stressful profession in the world and now I can see why! It is a little daunting as a student of PR to see this, but I just have to think positive and remember what I love about public relations.

Until next time, 

Kelsey

1616 5762

Bentley Internal