My Public Relations Internship

This summer I performed my public relations internship at Cameron Memorial Community Hospital in Angola, Indiana. There are many public relations tasks that I was assigned to complete throughout my internship experience, but I had three favorites that I would specifically like to discuss. They include:

• Important writing assignments
• The annual marketing report
• The 2014 golf outing silent auction

As for writing assignments, I was assigned many. After all, writing is one of the most vital factors in the public relations world. My favorite writing assignment, however, was about a new policy that the hospital would be adapting. This policy was called “Stop the Line.” I got to interview the chief operating officer of the hospital for this article because she was the one in charge of putting this policy into play.

This policy is becoming more common among hospitals because of its purpose. There have been studies done in hospitals that prove some of the medical mistakes that occur, happen because of a lack of communication.

This lack of communication is because of people not feeling like they have a right to speak up. Nurses are feeling inferior to doctors. When the nurses want to question something that the doctor is doing, they do not speak up. The nurse speaking up could make the difference of a patient living or dying. This is just one example of how this lack of communication happens.

This policy has been created to stop this lack of communication. My job in writing the article was to portray the importance of the policy to everyone else that would be reading it. This is why the assignment was so important to me.

The second public relations assignment that I enjoyed doing was the hospital’s annual marketing report. This job got tedious at times but it was very important. I had to read through every newspaper and magazine that went out in our area and make sure that if there was an article or an advertisement about the hospital in it, I would cut it out. I would then scan it into the computer and add it to the report.

The report contained the title of the article or advertisement, the date it was in the newspaper or magazine and the name of the newspaper or other published item that I cut the item out of. At the end of the year, the marketing report goes to the hospital’s board of directors and they analyze whether the department is accurately marketing the hospital or not. This was an important job because I got to be the person that made this report that represented all of the hard work that our department did.

I also organized the silent auction that was held at the hospital’s annual golf outing. I called past donors to see if they were interested in donating an item to the silent auction. I kept an excel spreadsheet of who was donating, their contact information, what they donated, etc.

I had to create posters for each item to display what the items looked like. I then had to be at the golf outing to set this all up. This was a wonderful experience for me.

Overall, my internship taught me many hands-on public relations skills that I will carry with me into my professional future. It was such an amazing experience.