Where are Health Care Communicators?
on June 23, 2009
From Just So You Know...Getting feisty about healthcare communications
By Daphne Leigh Swancutt (twitter: @daphneleigh)
Time to take your seat, kiddos
Healthcare communicators don’t get much respect.
We’re the creatives in a conservative industry, we bring dull documents to life, produce lovely publications, manage nice little events and throw logos onto brochures. On occasion, we can even avert a potentially messy crisis. (Wow—really?)
In terms of our brand, we’re the pretty-package people; manufacturers of lowbrow frivolity that anyone can do. I don’t mean to get tetchy about fun and creativity, but what happens when this defines our roles as communicators? Not much. Substantively, hardly anything at all. And, guess what? It’s our own fault.
Why? We’re so screwed up by these assumptions that we fail to claim our places at The Table.
That would be the table where organizational strategy is debated and decided. Some healthcare organizations do it in the guise of business development or strategic planning. These folks are planners, analysts and data crunchers—hardly communicators.
And why is it important to have communicators at that table? On the consumer end, poor communication has an impact on access, quality and outcomes. Do you think it might have something to do with rising healthcare costs? Besides care, what about issues related to policy and reform? Think it would help to have the folks trained to talk with “the rest of us” in those discussions?
There are hundreds of examples involving message, process or execution where the people most needed at that table have been too quiet for too long about taking their rightful place.
I say it’s time to speak up and claim your seat—loudly and frequently. Until healthcare communicators do, we’re just the little kids at a separate table. Respect is earned, sure. Start by respecting yourself.
Photo: © Krasphoto, Dreamstime