 Guys, I'm Teri. I am a former barracks officer at Mass General Hospital. I'm 28, I live in Rich, and I feel old right now. So I just want to tell you a little bit about how I arrived in the current job that I have. So I graduated from UNH in 2009 with a degree in English journalism and a minor in Spanish, and I didn't know what I wanted to do or how I was going to do it after I graduated, so I was a host of several restaurants. For the summer and then I went through until January and then I moved to Boston and I got an internship at a consumer-based PR agency in Boston. I had a connection with a woman that I worked there, went to a high school with her sister. So I interned there for four months and then they hired me full-time. I worked there a little over a year and learned while I was there that that was not the right field for me. It's not that I didn't enjoy my experience there, but I just knew that this wasn't going to be an extended career for me. So I knew that I loved to write, I loved the news, I loved journalism, so I left Sir Coney Brown Company, which is the PR firm in Boston, and I got my master's at Emerson in print and multimedia journalism, and that's where I knew this is what I wanted to do. I loved storytelling. We learned a lot about video and photo and storytelling through different platforms. So before I finished at Emerson, I started working for Boston.com. I don't know if any of you are familiar with their community sites. It's called Nortel, and it's basically community reporting. So I covered, I'm from the North Shore of Boston, so I covered the North Shore for Boston.com, and at the same time I wrote for the print edition of the Globe, which was awesome. Every young reporter's dreams to see your name published in the Boston Globe, so that was really cool. So I worked for Boston.com for about nine months, and then I got laid off. This was when John Henry bought the Globe, and they changed a lot of things, and they decided they didn't need me anymore. So I stopped the writing for Boston.com, but continued to work as an independent contractor for the Globe. So I had articles published in the main Globe edition, and then I wrote more, and then I realized I needed health insurance, and wanted a consistent salary and benefits. So I started looking for a full-time job, and when I did that, I got a part-time job at Salem News, working as a cop reporter with the night shift. So I was commuting from South Boston to Beverly Mass every day, working until 11 and making no money. So I did that for three months, and then this position at MGH became available, and I applied, and I got it. So I've been there for two years, and it's an incredible place to work. It's the number one hospital in the nation, and you can even begin to imagine the number of interesting, fascinating things that happen at MGH. So is anyone, is everyone PR communication majors for the most part? Cool. Okay. Is anyone interested in PR and healthcare? Maybe? Exploring it. You've got sophomores, because if anyone, juniors, seniors, live it up. So our office is not just media relations. So we're called public affairs because we're a multi-faceted department. We basically do everything. Media-related, communication-related for the hospital. So we have 12 people in our department. It's a very small department in comparison to Max General as whole. And we service every department in the hospital. There are 75 departments in the hospital. And we also work with local, national, international media, print, radio, TV, novelists, documentarians. I mean, we work with a very, very broad scope of people. So there are four media officers. I'm one of the four. There's our media relations manager, the internal communications manager, a research writer. She writes all the press releases about new studies, new research, new clinical trials that are going on at the hospital. And there's the manager of the Paul S. Russell Museum and our graphic designer, and then our boss, who's the senior vice president of public affairs. So to give you a little perspective about MGH, there are 30,000 employees. It's huge. There's over 4,300 registered nurses, over 2,200 clinical staff, almost 2,300 researchers, scientists, and fellows, and then over 12,000 employees in other roles. So nutritional services, buildings and grounds. So as a PR professional, your goal is to get media coverage for your client, for your company, if you're working in-house. And for us, it's not difficult because MGH is massive and it has a very prestigious reputation in the country. So getting media coverage is not difficult, which makes our job easy, I guess, on that front, kind of. So our main responsibility is to tell the MGH story, and we do so in many ways. Our offices run kind of like a newsroom. So the major hospital departments are divided amongst the four media officers. So I cover media relations for neurology, neurosurgery, imaging and radiology, sports medicine, and orthopedics. And then my colleagues handle media relations for cardiology, women's health, urology, GI, psychiatry, and any other requests for, you get a lot of thyroid endocrine requests. Those don't fall under our major beats, we call them. So whoever gets the request handles it. So my job is basically to become immersed in these departments and build relationships with the chiefs of the departments, the clinical staff, physicians, nurses, anesthesiologists, anyone basically that I can or that's interested in media. I'm supposed to become buddies with them, which is cool because they're all very smart and very interesting. So I have to learn about what they do, what research they're working on, if they have any interesting patient stories, anything unique. And I have to mold those unique patient stories, new research into pitchable stories. Because M.G. is so large, a majority of our workload is incoming requests. So any time a reporter wants to speak to one of our experts, a physician, a nutritionist, a nurse, a researcher, anyone, they have to go through our office. So a big part of our job is facilitating those interviews. Sometimes if the doctor is comfortable enough, they can coordinate themselves. Sometimes it's easier to have the middle man out of the equation, but we facilitate these interviews for a number of reasons. We need to vet the request. We need to make sure that it isn't beneficial to the hospital, to the doctor to participate in an interview request. Is it controversial? Is it something that maybe we need to manage a little bit? And if the physician is going to speak to the reporter about a controversial issue, maybe they need some guidance about what to say, what they can, cannot say, things like that. Most local reporters are aware of this, but sometimes they'll go directly to the doctors and then the doctors will say, sorry to go through public affairs before I talk to you. So some of these incoming requests could be like when the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge first came about, it was huge. So reporters want to know, what's the latest in ALS research? Where is all this money from the Ice Bucket Challenge going? So I would coordinate interviews between the reporters and probably the chief of neurology because she's very vocal about ALS and ALS research and she's a big part of the research going on. So that's an example of an incoming request. Zika virus. I'm sure you guys have heard about it in the news. So we have one expert and a couple backup experts that are our go-tos for Zika. So we've been getting a lot of TV, radio, print requests from reporters to talk to someone about Zika. Enibola. That was crazy last year. We had, you know, there were a couple instances where we were getting, we were hearing about NGH receiving enibola patient and it was like pandemonium. It was crazy. So we had to do press conferences because we were getting so many incoming requests from every vocal TV station, every major newspaper in the area. So because we were getting so many requests, we couldn't answer them individually. We just said, okay, everyone come to NGH and we'll have a doctor talk about what's going on. So another part of our job is escorting reporters on campus. It's MG's policy that any time a reporter is at the hospital, they need to be with someone from public affairs. We have this policy in place for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason is for patient confidentiality and patient privacy. So and that's one of the most important things that I think is with this job is the patient. I mean, it's at a hospital, it's always going to be protecting the patient in terms of medialation, it's making sure the patient is comfortable doing an interview with a reporter for any given reason. So is it anyone familiar with HIPAA? I don't want to hear about it until I got to MGH. So HIPAA is and I still haven't remembered this health insurance portability and accountability act. So this law protects patient privacy. So a patient, a photo of a patient, a video of a patient, medical information, anything on a patient's medical record, anything that identifies the patient cannot be released on social media to the public in any way without their consent. So when we have a patient that's being interviewed, for example, going back to the ALS ice hockey challenge, if an ALS patient at MGH is being interviewed, they need to sign a consent form. So that's they really, we have a two-day orientation when we start and they really emphasize the importance of patient confidentiality. So sometimes we'll have reporters that call if there's a big car accident in Boston or in the area and it is of interest to the local media. Usually they're brought to MGH just because of its central location in Boston and its size. So, you know, if the patient is brought to MGH, reporters will call us and they'll say, can we have any information about this patient? We cannot provide any information unless that patient has given the go ahead for us to do so. So, so getting into that, being reactive to anything that's going on in the news that has to do with MGH or raking news, car accidents, Pzika virus, Ebola, things like that. If we're getting a lot of calls, we have to be able to react to those calls, which gets, which gets intense. And, you know, sometimes we'll have celebrities or high-profile people being treated at MGH. So that's also, you know, a great interest to the public and to the, and to news outlets. So we manage incoming requests from reporters about that, too. The other part of our job has to do with internal communications. So we have a newsletter that is produced and published out of our office. It's called Hotline, and it is published every Friday, and it's about, you know, anything going on at E1H. I'm sorry. MGH. So if there is a unique patient story in one of my beats in one of my departments, then I can write about it and it can be published in Hotline. If we have a special event going on at the hospital, then that can be published in Hotline. So we also get to do writing, which is great. Videos. So we're really beefing up the video, the public affairs video. So we have a small camera and a tripod. And we try to accommodate any video requests that come from departments. So if they have an event going on and they want it filmed, we'll film that. We'll edit it. And usually all the videos will go on the MGH YouTube channel. But sometimes departments want a really polished video that we unfortunately can't produce because we don't have the means. We don't have the equipment, the lighting, things like that. So we do pretty basic videos. We have bi-monthly lectures at the museum during the week. So I film those lecture videos and they are posted online. That's basically it. That's basically what I do. Skills that I think are necessary for this field. Social media, definitely. Twitter, Facebook, we have various Facebook accounts. The corporate Facebook account is managed by marketing. But sometimes we'll send them stories so we coordinate posts also. And YouTube, definitely in Periscope I think, is something that we're going to start using if there's a press conference or event that maybe would be of interest to the public or to press and someone can't make it, then we'll try to have that available for people to use. I think basic video and video editing skills really come in handy. I don't think it is something that is required by many places. But I think it's definitely a way that you can stand out. No one else in my office knows how to use video. So I'm basically the only person that does it and I think that's a way, again, a way for you to stand out. If you don't, I mean I learned Final Cut Pro at Emerson and I learned how to use a camera at Emerson. So I have that training but you can learn online. I mean sometimes I forget how to do something on Final Cut Pro. If you just Google it, there are YouTube tutorials and they're really easy to follow. Advice. Start early with internships that are challenging because that's how and where you're going to learn. I did one internship this summer going into my junior year at UNH and I couldn't learn much. I was a very challenged. It was at a local magazine that was based out of Andover. It's a great magazine but I didn't do much. I was fact checking. I went to some photo shoots but I didn't feel challenged because I was nervous which I feel like maybe people your age are getting out there a lot sooner than people that graduated my year of college which is great and actually pretty jealous. You guys are going to be involved which I wrote for my college newspaper but again I didn't feel prepared when I left college. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know. Didn't have many resources so definitely start early sophomore, junior year, do something that is going to be challenging and while you're doing it, if you're returning somewhere, make connections, get people's email addresses because down the road, never know. You can email them and they can be parking somewhere that you're in your plane for a job there. They would be really useful. Oh if you're scared to do something just do it. Get outside your comfort zone. This is the news and events page of the master on the website. This is managed by my office, not by me personally but we have news releases that are written by the science writer that I mentioned. She is a genius. I don't know how she takes these complicated studies that these people are doing at MGH and she turns it into plain English. I don't know how she does that. This is some media covers that we've gotten. This is something that's a big topic right now. This is not handled by me. This is handled by my colleague Mackenzie and Lesley, Dr. Leslie Kirsner works in the newborn unit. She works with a lot of babies that are born having been exposed to drugs so they go through withdrawals and it's very prevalent actually, unfortunately. I don't know if you guys have been seeing the opioid crisis in the news. That's something big going on. I'm sorry. I feel like I miss college maybe. That's a big thing that's going on right now so MGH has a big addiction recovery unit that is very, we have a couple positions that are vocal about change. They are contacted a lot to participate in media. Stories like this, cancer patient win stream wedding. This MGH patient was honored at the first women revolution soccer game, which is very cool. The marathon is coming up so my colleague who handles media relations for Mass General Hospital for Children, that has a team that's running an American. She's doing or working on getting a lot of coverage for the marathon. This is someone that is running the marathon for her son that died. I think he was a patient at MGHFC, hotline story. This is very cool. Another part of our job is crisis management. I was in here during the marathon, Boston Marathon bombings, but because of our location we got several victims of the marathon bombing. There was a lot of crisis control during that time, working around the clock and answering the phones ringing off the hook. We also have, which I did not mention, we are on call probably once every month, sometimes every other month. So every Tuesday you'll get a pager. Yes, a pager. Every single employee at MGH has a pager. It's kind of crazy. And you have a pager for seven days and anytime someone from the media wants to reach someone from the public affairs, wants to interview someone, if there's breaking news like the marathon bombings or the Ebola issue that was going on last year, then they will aid you at all hours of the night. Thanks. So getting back to the marathon bombing, Dr. David King is a trauma surgeon and he was, I believe he was running the marathon and then he ran from, I think, I don't know if he finished, either finished or he didn't, he ran from the route to MGH and just immediately started treating patients. So he went to a school in the North Bend to teach teachers how to factor against in case, you know, with all the old math shootings and things going on, it's important for teachers to learn how to do that. So we're here today to complete training at St. John's School to make this school the first hard-working consensus to comply with school in the country. It'll be the first school where every single teacher has had hands-on in-person training on temperature control and tourniquet application and where he successfully distributed those temperature control devices' training into every classroom in our school. Beginning of the day, Dr. David approached me as to how open we would be in learning this tournament and participating in the training for a tournament use and when he explained how this came about and the importance of this and the fact that many lives could have been saved not standing firm, we felt an obligation to participate in this training. I feel that we would be able to do this. Right now we're doing the training to make sure that we can properly apply during the crisis or any kind of, you know, after that we might have to, I think it's really great for teachers to be able to just have the skills especially because we're learning a lot about differentiating procedures as part of the lockdown rules, making sure that they understand, you know, if she's done it in the building, we are not familiar with the culture, that they know where the office is, you know, just to be more cautious and aware of it has some really good skills to have in order to, you know, prepare us for that to fit in more often as to any of our students. I'll change to this ball under our new appreciation of what a first responder is. Generally with regard to first responders as police and fire and EMS, but most of recent mass shootings has made us appreciate that we should probably redefine what that role is, what a first responder truly is. The fact is that at all of these mass shootings in mass gatherings including the Boston bombing, truly it is the first people to respond to the interview, a lot of bystanders, and as was the case during the Sandy County Tattoo, those first responders, truly the people on the scene first, were the teachers. Doing this project itself is its own body of research, but within this educational process we're also retesting people we educate throughout the year and determine how often lately people will be retraining their skills and trying to teach them the correct sequence of steps to go back to America and then teach them the pitfalls and the common errors that people make so they can consciously avoid them. Everyone has, and I think that I, everyone asked with a high degree of enthusiasm. So that garnered a good amount of local coverage. I think Channel 5 WCPD attended this class and they ran a story about that. So does anyone have any questions? Did your journalism experience help with this job? Yes, so thank you for bringing that up because I forgot to mention that. And I think it's extremely valuable to have journalism experience in public relations and media relations because you were on the other end of it. You were getting pitched by people at PR agencies and I know in my position what stories that reporters are going to want to cover, what stories they're not going to want to cover, what kind of be-roll they're going to need on their shoe, and that is very helpful. And you know the news cycles, so that is something that's very valuable, but there's someone in our office that has had no journalism experience. He's just worked in PR and he is a lean, mean, pitching machine. He writes an incredible pitch and he's really good talking to reporters and getting them to cover things going on at MGH. So for me, I think it's very helpful. Everyone else in our office I think has had a journalism experience. So it's definitely, you need to know you need to know what a good news story is, I think, to be in this role definitely. What were your personal kind of likes and dislikes about the difference between working in a PR department versus a PR firm? So what I didn't like about working in a firm is that you are at the mercy of your clients. So you could work really hard on something and depending on your client's personality, doesn't matter how good whatever it was you were working on turned out. If they don't like it, if they don't like you, then it's a problem. So that was a lot of pressure and having to meet certain monthly goals or promise something and have to deliver on it, that was difficult for me. And again, a lot, a lot of pressure. Some people love it. It's cool you get to plan events and you get to meet different magazine editors and you make a lot of connections, but it just wasn't for me. So, and I don't think MGH, working in the public affairs offices, your traditional media relations job, because we have so many roles at the hospital, again, crisis management, internal communications, traditional media relations. So, and you're in the hospital, I've been in four brain surgeries with reporters. So that, I mean, that's, I just stood there. I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't going to abuse anyone, but I was in the OR, in a state of the art OR watching these genius neurosurgeons operate people with Parkinson's disease and change people's lives and being a part of that is awesome thing. So, kind of going off that, you ended up at Mass Journal Hospital, obviously. Like, did you test out all of the different fields? Like, did you test out entertainment? Did you test out lifestyle? Who are you? Did you test out all the different types where you knew that health was what you wanted to focus on? I didn't. I didn't know that I wanted to focus on health. I had, you know, I think medicine, generally speaking, is interesting, but it, I didn't come out of my job at the globe and say, I want to get a job at Mass Journal. I want to work in healthcare. I didn't know that, but I just, you know, the job description just kind of, you know, I checked everything up. Yeah, it stood out. And when I came in for my interviews, I clicked with everyone and I kind of just went from there. I have cards if anyone in the future ever has any questions, career advice, anything, always feel free to email me. Well, thank you very much.