Not everyone knows a public relations practitioner, but everyone does know a doctor. It is critical for health care agencies, providers, and practitioners to establish trust and gain rapport with patients. Because everyone needs medical attention at some point in their life, it is sometimes assumed that building relationships isn’t quite as important for medical facilities as maybe a clothing or food brand (you can live without new Nikes, but you can’t live without a doctor). Instead of reinventing the healthcare sector, maybe we just need to reinvest in relationships. I would argue that taking the time to invest effort in seemingly minuscule aspects of healthcare establishments as well as the large aspects will pay off and help establish community health overall.
If Your Patients Matter, so do ALL of Your Employees
I currently work at a hospital, but I will never forget my first meeting with the Vice President of Communications and the insight he gave me about building positive perceptions. He told me that every employee in the hospital mattered— surgeons, nurses, janitors and so on. The VP explained that even having a dirty lobby floor could translate to major negative assumptions about the quality and care the hospital is willing to invest in a patient’s experience. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure every employee knows that their work is appreciated and contributes to the goal of the hospital.
Meet People Where They Are
Reliance on professional healthcare providers is ebbing due to a variety of concerns such as trust, cost, and ability to physically get to clinics, offices, and hospitals. Marketing your health institution is important to build awareness but healthcare needs to transcend a phone screen. People-to-people connections will leave a lasting impression. Think about it this way; to increase blood donations we don’t just see the Red Cross advertising, we see them in our schools, churches, and community showing up to do the good work that they do. Another local hospital I spoke with told me about a mobile mammogram van that goes into the community to screen females who may not otherwise take the precautions to be tested. To promote trust and wellbeing between medical personnel and citizens, community outreach is a valuable tool to promote medical work overall.
Transparency Even When It’s Easy to Hide
Honesty, especially when practiced by private hospitals and other medical entities earns you trust and comfortable patients. How comfortable is your medical system with releasing prices, or patient outcomes to the general public without prompting? It’s also almost always embarrassing to admit our faults, especially when the ‘oops’ could have been prevented; however, I would venture to say that people will trust a company more that is open about past mistakes and takes the time to apologize and learn from their mistakes.
People are an End not a Means to an End
This semester I have been an instructional assistant for an ethics course. Fitting enough, the professor who teaches the course is on the board of a hospital and has navigated a plethora of ethical business dilemmas. An influential philosopher that the students learn about is Immanuel Kant. The main teachings that the course narrows in on is the categorical imperative and the teaching that it is our duty to treat people never as an ends to a mean, but instead as an end in of itself. I know, I know, philosophical jargon can be very confusing but essentially what Kant teaches us is that we should never use people. It’s very easy to associate patients in the medical setting as a number. Whenever we speak about the size of a hospital naturally, we’re drawn to know how many beds the hospital holds. More beds, more money, more workers, more resources typically. However, it is critical to try to disassociate a monetary figure to a person’s health as to better serve every population in need. Patients should not be viewed as a burden to society solely because they use Medicare and Medicaid, but they also should not be seen as a paycheck due to the need for their ongoing care. A person’s health and happiness need to be the primary end result we look towards.
The healthcare industry is ever-changing, dynamic, and will always be in need.
Caring about people, community health, and the desire to build relationships makes healthcare PR a rewarding career field, at least that’s what I hear so far. To ensure your healthcare institution will remain sustainable in your community, it is key to prioritize relationships and champion patient needs by investing effort and compassion.
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