Healthcare is an important issue to us. We follow the issue carefully and regularly read the latest opinions. I purposely engage people with differing points of view to try to better understand their positions.
So I took strong interest in listening to participants in media training with a healthcare company. I sat in a room for about nine hours with several people who I consider experts in various aspects of healthcare.
What struck me was just how complex healthcare in general is for even people we think of as experts. They face difficult questions from both the media and the public. In fact, a doctor sitting at the table said people have asked her for advice on whom to vote for.
Imagine the challenges healthcare companies face when trying to share in short, interesting sound bites their complex stories. Employees can easily and inadvertently misstate the facts or not properly represent a company’s brand. On this subject, journalists can easily back someone in a corner.
Any industry with its share of controversy can probably learn at least something from the issues healthcare professionals face when facing the media. In the next few weeks, we’ll write about and tackle some of the advice and ideas I shared during media training. In the meantime, don’t feel dumb when healthcare debates confuse you. Even the experts must practice fully grasping all the different issues and relaying them succinctly and accurately to the public.