Public Relations Officer Interview - Essay Example

? Public Relations Officer Interview Task The interview took place at Richmond VA with Darlene Edwards the public relations officer of the Centre. Ms. Edwards is a registered nurse (RN) who has a Master of Science degree in the field of nursing and has a lot of experience in the medical field. This is because she has been working with the veteran medical facility at Richmond for a period of twenty years as their public relations officer. According to the interview carried out, the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Hospital was formerly established back in the year 1946 to care for the women and men who had served or still serves the country in war. The Richmond Veterans Hospital offers services to over two hundred thousand veterans who dwell in the central and southern parts of North Carolina. Their services are offered in their outpatient clinics that have been located in Emporia, Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. The Hunter Holmes Hospital was actually the first hospital in VA to execute heart transplants on its patients. The Richmond VAMC is also the hospital that offers patients suffering from heart failure with medical care throughout the country. In addition, the hospital offers a variety of services to its patients that range from comprehensive outpatient care to the multifaceted inpatient services like heart, kidney, liver and lung transplantations. The medical facility also provides medical care to patients suffering from traumatic spinal and brain injuries. The hospital has about 415 operating beds and an acute care department, mental health services and nursing home. In addition, a new polytrauma transitional rehabilitation center was recently opened to assist injured veterans adjust to living normal lives (US Department of Veteran Affairs, 2012). Ms. Edwards, the public relations officer at the Richmond Veterans Hospital plays various roles on behalf of the facility. She is responsible for handling any negative information or incidents that may affect the facility by issuing or releasing good information to the public (Gupta, 2005). For instance, in one occasion Ms. Edwards was called to the facility when a radiologist committed suicide at the hospital one night. It was therefore her responsibility to discuss the situation with the police officers, determine who and how the family of the deceased should be informed and deliver a statement to the hospital staff and the press. In another instance, an employee who was engaged to another employee fell out with his fiancee and shot his fiancees cousin as they arrived at the facility (the cousin was a veteran who had been receiving cancer treatment and was killed). Ms. Edwards immediately communicated with the police, offered statements to the press and communicated the situation to the hospital’s employees. On the same day that I interviewed Ms. Edwards, the assailant was in court pleading not guilty though she ensured that the employees who had been affected by the incident were okay. The Richmond VAMC hosted the wheelchair Olympics this summer with Ms. Edwards being put in charge of coordinating the event which took a great deal of her time and energy. Prior to the event she resided at the downtown Marriot hotel which was the center for operations for this event. She was charged with the tasks of directing the events, the staff members, various organizers, participants, medical staff and everyone else who was a part of the event. The public relations officer for the Richmond VAMC was also responsible for arranging the itinerary and making clearances with the hospital’s director when public figures like Michelle Obama visited the facility. According to the WWBT news, the first lady, Michelle Obama’s visit to the Richmond region came less than three months after the president had visited. It was a high profile visit to the state which was considered an important swing state during the coming elections. The news channel reported that at around lunchtime on Wednesday, the country’s first lady would attend a high profile fundraiser for the Democrat National Committee and her husband’s re-election campaign. It is after this luncheon that the first lady would visit soldiers who were recovering at the Hunter Holmes McGuire V.A medical Center’s Polytrauma unit (Newsome, 2012). During such high profile visits, it is the responsibility of the hospital’s public relations officer to ensure that all her staff members are in order. In relating with external world, the hospitals public relations officer has been instrumental in putting the Richmond VA Hospital on facebook and twitter and submitting stories to the country’s newspapers concerning the facility. However, the public relations officer’s role is not to market the facility though her role is important since it involves informing the veterans what the VA has to offer them. As a federal institution, the VA should not be involved in marketing but can acquire funding for their public relations activities (Gupta, 2005). Therefore, Ms. Edwards who is the public relations officer should play the role of marketing the VA and its program as well as show the facility’s face to the public. The Richmond VAMC facility has a medical center with 427 operating beds that usually offers primary, secondary and a tertiary diagnostic and a therapeutic health services center. The therapeutic health services center offers services in the fields of medicine, surgery, neurology, rehabilitation medicine, intermediate care, acute and sustained spinal cord injuries, skilled nursing home care and palliative care to the primary adult and geriatric population. In addition, the Richmond VAMC center also has a comprehensive dental program that offers a full array of services. The provision of primary and secondary levels of inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care and substance rehabilitation programs are also offered by the Richmond VAMC hospital. This medical center also serves as one of VHA’s five polytrauma rehabilitation centers. According to reports, the medical center recently received the designation of being an Epilepsy center for excellence (US Department of Veteran Affairs, 2012). During the interview, Ms. Edwards said that her primary role involved the facilitation of the medical centers communication both externally and internally. She suggested that it was also her responsibility to ensure that any events held by the medical facility were planned well. She was supposed to pay inspection visits to the sites hosting the events and coordinate all the efforts at the site to ensure they achieved success. In addition, Ms. Edwards said that it was also her role to serve as a resource for their congressional staff members and prepare strategic messaging services for the leadership of the Richmond VAMC hospital (Gupta, 2005). Her job entailed ensuring effective communications with the facility’s employees through issuing weekly messages through their website or Facebook and Twitter. These channels were the most appropriate for her use since they were available to many people and cost effective for the medical facility. The public relations officer was also involved in organizing recognition week activities for the facility’s staff members and communicating with various organizations that were responsible for veteran services. On a regular basis, it was her role to interact with members of the press information concerning the events that were taking place at the medical facility. The public relations officer also confirmed that she was responsible for coordinating the activities and initiatives of the medical center’s leadership team (Gupta, 2005). In terms of addressing the issues and problems or promoting the medical facility, it was also the public relations officer’s responsibility of communicating any information that may impact the VA’s or the facility’s operation. Ms. Edward’s role in the medical facility also involves issue or disaster management since she has an active role to play in their incident command center. The officer is responsible for the preparation of communication for the medical center and other external stakeholders. As part of the officer’s role, she interacts with the medical center’s clinicians and leadership, the VISN and the VA central offices on a daily basis. In addition, the officer also has to interact with members of the country’s military forces, the congressional offices and the media, area businesses and various veteran service organizations (Gupta, 2005). This is done for the purpose of ensuring that the issues affecting the medical facility and the veterans receiving treatment from the facility are effectively resolved. On interviewing the public relations officer at the Richmond VAMC, I discovered that the medical facility had a formal public relations plan. According to the officer, the plan entailed several things which included the sharing of the medical centers goals, plans, key messages and responsibilities. However, during the interview the officer also confirmed that she faced several challenges as the medical centers public relations professional. Ms. Edwards suggested that she encountered challenges in providing the depth of communication and acquiring the support that such a large facility required with limited resources. She suggested this was mainly because the key messages that she usually delivered to their external or internal users required continuous communication efforts that were not being provided by the medical center. The officer additionally suggested that the country’s legislation limited the advertising opportunities that the medical facility had. Since the facility was a federal institution, it was not supposed to advertise its activities or services to the public thereby hindering them from increasing the people’s awareness on their presence and activities. According to Ms. Edwards, the boundaries put by the country’s legislation on the facility’s advertisement efforts reduced their ability of exploiting the numerous excellent initiatives that could not be shared with the media due to this requirement. References Gupta, D. (2005). Handbook of Advertising Media and Public Relations. New York: Mittal Publications. Newsome, P. (2012). First Lady Michelle Obama to Visit Richmond. WWBT, Richmond: EmailNEWS . US Department of Veteran Affairs. (2012). Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center – Richmond, VA. US Department of Veteran Affairs. Retrieved on October 8, 2012 from: http://www.richmond.va.gov/about/ Read More