Monday, October 27, 2008

PRSSA Conference....week 8

I'm not going to summarize or describe the events going on at the PRSSA Conference because so many of my other collegues have already done so. Instead, I would like to talk about one session I attended. On Saturday afternoon I went to the Promoting Healthy Living: Health care PR session and really enjoyed hearing from Rose Glenn (Senior Vice President, Marketing and Public Relations, Henry Ford Health System). Her 24 years of experience in health care was blatantly obvious and I found that I could relate to her discussion. She gave us the breakdown of the marketing and PR department and after working at Children's hospital over the summer, I realized that they had a similar system. Within the marketing and PR department were: marketing and promotion, system communication/internal communication, media relations, web services and events management. It would be interesting to see how other hospitals divide their departments or if they do at all. I feel that its really based on the size of the hospital. Nevertheless, Ms. Glenn talked about how health care PR is different from other forms of PR because there are several audiences you must take into consideration. Although it is a great idea to start blogging and use other forms of social media within a health care organization, it may not always be the solution because doctors or even nurses on the floors may not have access to a blog and so forth. I know that at Nationwide Children's several web sites were blocked because of the restrictions the hospital had set in place. Plus, you are dealing with perhaps a few "traditionalists" and "baby boomers" who think differently than our generation, the millennials. Nevertheless, in health care or at least internally, your audience is extremely broad; therefore think it's important to keep the old tactics and occasionally throw in some new tactics like social media.

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