A Day In The Life Of A Public Relations Consultant At A Global Medical Transportation Company
A public relations manager at a global medical transportation company faces a dynamic work environment where "your life can quickly go from...a standard to-do list...to complete chaos by midday," often due to unexpected crises like mass casualty incidents. Daily responsibilities include compiling a media report, managing a shared media inbox to direct inquiries and support team members, and ensuring timely, effective responses, all while coordinating with thousands of employees across the nation.
Communication, Crisis Management, Media Relations, Teamwork, Project Management
Advizer Information
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Nicole Michel
Public Relations Consultant
A Global Medical Transportation Company
California State University Chico
N/A
Creative Writing, Journalism
Healthcare, Medical & Wellness
Communication and Marketing
None Applicable
Video Highlights
1. Public relations in the medical field involves handling crises and requires quick thinking and adaptability. A PR manager may need to quickly shift priorities to address urgent situations such as mass casualty incidents.
2. Daily tasks include media monitoring, compiling reports, and managing media inquiries from a shared inbox. This involves prioritizing important news, assigning tasks to team members, and ensuring timely responses.
3. A PR manager often works collaboratively with a team. The example shows the importance of team coordination, assigning tasks, providing support, and monitoring progress to ensure efficient responses to media and internal stakeholders
Transcript
What does a day in the life of a public relations manager look like?
Working in EMS, there is no average day. Your life can quickly go from having a standard to-do list to complete chaos by midday.
Most of this is attributed to the fact that you have 40,000 employees in ambulances, aircraft, and fire engines across the nation. It might be that by mid-morning there's a mass casualty incident in Dallas. You need to quickly pivot, set aside anything you're working on, and focus on crisis communications.
There are some non-negotiables in a position like this. In the morning, we would assemble a media report. This involves going through a media monitoring platform like Cision or Meltwater and looking at the past 24 hours of coverage. If it's a Monday, you review everything from Friday to Monday.
You sift through all of these stories to find the most pertinent ones to the organization. These might be reputational issues that have just popped up in a specific market or updates on a crisis situation happening in California. You try to find the most pertinent pieces of news to share with the entire organization. This report gets sent out to thousands of people.
Every morning, I had to check in with the two PR specialists on my team to make sure they had everything they needed to complete their assigned projects for the day. The last non-negotiable is the shared media inbox. This is a common practice in many large organizations where all media inquiries are funneled into one inbox.
An entire public relations department or team has access to this inbox. My primary responsibility was to sift through the incoming inquiries and assign them to either a PR specialist or myself. From there, you involve the necessary parties in formulating a response, selecting a candidate for an interview, prepping a candidate, or taking appropriate actions.
If I myself were responding to an inquiry, my primary responsibility was to complete it start to finish. If a teammate were handling it, my responsibility was to monitor the process, provide assistance if they got hung up or had questions, and ensure the response was completed or the interview coordinated before the deadline.