Hi all,
I’m now six weeks into my 12 week placement at a specialist healthcare PR consultancy based in Sydney.
Well, what a difference a month and a half makes!
As a final year public relations major, I was slightly daunted to choose a ‘specialty’ so to speak. Did I want to work in-house or in consultancy? Was I more passionate about consumer pr, not-for-profit work or corporate communications? Did I want to completely abandon my marketing major and pursue work exclusively in PR?
As I made the move to Sydney, and began looking for PR393 placements, these questions swirled around in my head constantly – I felt under pressure to define my career path – even though I was still more than six months away from graduating!
It was purely by accident that I stumbled across an advertisement on the PRIA careers portal (an excellent resource for anyone looking for a PR position in the eastern states!) for an internship at a specialist healthcare PR consultancy.
Coming from Perth, a city dominated by the resources industry, pursuing opportunities in healthcare PR had never even occurred to me.
The first four weeks of my placement have been a real challenge. Working in healthcare PR involves getting your head around the science of medical conditions and their treatments – in the first days of my placement I felt a bit like I was back in primary school and completely clueless as to what I was doing.
Six weeks on however, I feel like I’m beginning to get my head around healthcare PR. I can now throw around terms like bisphosphonates and crikopharangeous – just don’t ask me to spell them without the aid of google!
I am also beginning to understand the Medicines Australia code, which regulates how pharmaceutical companies can promote products and medications to patients and doctors. Working within such a strict code presents some real challenges, and it also means that all materials from media releases to patient brochures to website copy go through the strictest of approval processes before being released to the public. Working to gain these approvals before editorial deadlines can be frustrating, but knowing that the information you will be distributing has the potential to improve the lives of thousands of people makes it all worthwhile.
Literally stumbling into healthcare PR by accident has made me realise the benefits of keeping an open mind, and not deciding on your ‘specialty’ too early. If I had already defined my career path, before looking for PR393 placements, I would have dismissed this fantastic opportunity and missed out on a fantastic placement – one in which I am learning truckloads and have the opportunity to really hone my PR skills.
Until next time...
1 comment:
Hi,
I had a hard time deciding between in-house and consultancy too!! Well, as much as I thought consultancy would be able to expose me to many exciting experience by working with projects from different consultancy, the idea of managing so much industry specific information at the same time really got me frightened. As an end result, I choose to perform my attachment in-house.
I remember from my very first Public Relations lesson, I had been taught that Public Relations consist mainly of disseminating the correct information to the intended publics so as to educate and benefit them. It’s really wonderful that you actually found a attachment that does exactly that!!
How I wished I had the courage to venture out just like you did! Look forward to see your post regarding the attachment in the future. I would really like to know what exactly does the consultancy does!
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