Will you sink of swim?

Hi everyone!

I am in my final semester of my Management and Public Relations degree at Curtin University and I am currently in my sixth week of my PR internship at St John of God Murdoch Hospital (SJOGMH). This blog post is concentrating on everything I have done from the first till the third week of my internship and boy have I learnt a lot in a short period of time.

The first challenge I faced during this unit started way before I took my first steps into the PR and Community Relations department of SJOGMH, and that was finding a placement. I'm not going to lie, finding a placement wasn't my cup of tea. The idea of cold-calling an organisation in the hopes of scoring a twenty day internship terrified me and three weeks until the start of semester I knew I had to get my butt into gear and just do it!

After a week of procrastination and researching various organisations I finally made the call to SJOG and I'm glad I did, as they said I could definitely do a placement in their PR and Marketing team at their Murdoch campus on the days I was free (I work 30 hours already). In all honesty the last six weeks have flown by and I don't think I could have selected a better organisation to intern for.

For those who don't know, SJOG hospitals are private, non-profit and located throughout Australia and New Zealand. SJOG appealed to me as an organization as they were non-profit and I always wanted a career in health care.

But enough about that and let's get down to how my first three weeks went.

The first week of my internship was the sink or swim period, and to say I was thrown into the deep end would be an understatement. My first day was centered on looking at all their publications, social media, community relations and events archives so I would have a feel for what the PR and Community Relations team does at SJOGMH. Then on the second day my first assignment was to interview two caregivers; a doctor and the Arts Program manager, and write up two separate pieces by the following week to be published in the SJOGMH quarterly newsletter "The Murdoch Messenger"

My boss, Roshan, asked me if I was comfortable jumping straight into the interviews solo and I jumped at the opportunity to shine. So, armed with a trusty tape recorder in my hand I set off to prove I could conduct a successful interview (I mean we all did them in PR 250 Media right?) and come up with a story with an angle that the public would be interested in, boy did that backfire at first.

I went into the first interview completely unprepared and it took only three minutes. I knew as soon as I was walking back I had screwed up by not preparing my questions beforehand. We were taught during PR 250 Media that preparation is the key when it comes to interviews, both as an interviewer and as an interviewee. I was not making that mistake again!

Heading into my second interview I still had my trusty tape recorder, but I was also armed with a sheet of questions that I had prepared which would hopefully start the ball rolling, and it did. I was more confident and I found I was able to probe deeper and get more relevant answers. Seems that in this instance what I had learnt at uni had paid off going into my internship.

The second week consisted of more interviews with more people, and more pieces to boot! Again, preparation was the key to my success and the key to being relaxed and confident. Up until this point I had received really positive feedback from Roshan on my writing though it did require editing before submission. The confidence boost I received from this feedback was exactly what I needed as I remember feeling extremely nervous after I had sent off my first piece to Roshan for approval in case it wasn't up to the standard of a university graduate.

One thing I have realised is I am now learning how to push out pieces and media releases in less than two hours, sometimes even in less than an hour. This is a huge turnaround from when I was at uni and writing up media releases for assignments would take me days. Roshan told me "limits and caveats breed creativity and force you to rely on your instincts" and I am starting to see how true this is.

My third week was not as hectic and I spent most of my time researching the use of social media in health care. SJOGMH has a social media plan and is active on Facebook and Twitter but want to better utilise various social media outlets to boost their profile as the leading private hospital in Western Australia. Roshan stressed to me that social media is not just about pushing information out, but making it relevant to the target audience and stakeholders. They want their stakeholders to engage with them as a brand and this requires using various channels more effectively.

So as you can see, my first three weeks were full on sink or swim moments but I am happy to say I have loved every moment of it so far, and I'll keep you posted on what is happening in the next few weeks.

(If you want to see some of my work, follow this link http://www.sjog.org.au/pdf/Murdoch_MM%20Autumn_2013_FINAL.pdf. I wrote the 'Caregiver of the Year' piece on page 3 and co-wrote 'The Art of Good Health' on page 4.

Until next time!

 

Heading back to the ‘private’ side

Yesterday brought my 20 days at Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital to an end. I usually work in a private hospital and wanted to work at Charlies to see how the ‘other side’ works. It certainly was interesting to see how a PR department functions with no budget whatsoever!

At my other employer, we have resources to produce visually good publications, have photoshoots, access to graphic designers, money for events and money for sponsorships.

In the public sector, there was not even a budget for these things, the only costs were for staff salaries and sundries (stationery etc). It is really difficult to do anything exciting or creative with no budget. The main work the department did was media and internal communications. There was a glossy publication they used to print for external stakeholders however they changed this to online to save costs.

At my placement i made some very good contacts for the future. Health is a fairly small network in Perth so i think having some contacts and the knowledge of the public sector would give me some great benefits. However, one thing i did find out is a love my current job and i’m happy to stay where i am, for now!

Jodie Leishman

Ethics vs career

I am completing PR & Journalism majors and in both of these courses I have completed ethics units. These units taught me about acting socially responsible and about being a good person when I get into the work place.

Unfortunately, I think these values leave us as soon as we get into the workplace, where money and career development take over.

I am completing my work placement at a hospital and I work at another hospital. I constantly deal with journalists to give out ‘condition reports’ on patients. A condition report is usually, ‘stable’ or ‘critical’. There are often things that happen which have a lot of media interest. A recent event occurred where a lady was driving to work with two of her children and she unfortunately had a crash and her five year old son died in the accident. She was also injured and her other son was in a critical condition at children’s hospital.

The event had a lot of media attention and I had journalists constantly calling up for information and condition reports. First of all, I couldn’t believe how many of the media outlets (online, tv and print) were completely inaccurate on the events that take place (one thing we are taught in uni is to check and confirm all facts). Secondly, I had a journalist ask me, on the day this happened, if the mother was up to talking to her. This made me so angry, I just wanted to say to her, what do you think? So I politely said, because her son died today, and because her other son is critically ill, and because she’s in hospital, then no, she probably isn’t ‘up to talking to you today’. The media ended up coming to the hospital and approaching the family anyway.

I know that coming out of university I wouldn’t dream of asking such a question. But are journalists so eager to get a story they would ask this of this poor lady?

I hope that we, as future employees, can keep some of those great ethical values we learn at university and take them into the work place.

Jodie Leishman

Budget cuts, kidney donations and wait times… a day in the life of hospital PR

Current health topics you have probably recently heard about in the media are things like long wait times, budget cuts, overcrowded emergency departments, hospital delays, elective surgery cuts… etc

The media are constantly criticising the public health system. Even in today’s West Australian there are two articles, “big hospital shutdown looms” and “child hospital delays”.

It is very frustrating working in a hospital PR department when you know hundreds of people are being treated every day with fantastic outcomes, but the only ones you hear about are the few negative situations.

This week I have experienced things like a husband who gave his wife one of his kidneys, a child who has received life-saving treatment for cancer and a premature baby successfully beginning to breathe on its own. These are just a few examples of the thousands of other patients receiving excellent treatment from our WA hospitals every day.

Publicity for public hospitals is almost anyways negative, so I think the quote “any publicity is good publicity” is definitely not relevant when it comes to health care!

Hospital PR - not a boring task!

Working in an in-house hospital PR department is definitely exciting! My work placement is at a prominent public hospital in Perth, Western Australia (WA). The public relations department has 3 full-time staff members, a manager, a media coordinator and a public relations officer.

The manager of the department looks after the corporate issues, such as sitting on committees, advising on communication strategies and external stakeholder relations.

The media coordinator has the specific job of, that’s right, looking after the media! There are constantly reporters and camera crews on site wanting the latest update on a patient’s condition. This exciting role involves liaising with journalists, organising interviews with patients and writing media releases.

The public relations officer looks after internal communications for the hospital’s 6000 staff members! All who are extremely busy and many who do not even have email. Can you imagine the job of trying to get a message across to this many people?

Due to the amount of staff members and the pressure of a hospital environment, writing hospital newsletters and communications requires you to write simple, easy and straight to the point (which has been difficult for me because I like writing creatively!).

The work I have done so far includes writing stories for the internal newsletter, re-writing and updating hospital brochures and the best so far which was interviewing a kidney donation patient for an article.

I look forward to updating you again soon on the exciting things happening in healthcare!