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!