I was talking with a camera operator the other day on a corporate video gig and he mentioned recently that he had a great experience with a local hospital here in Vegas. I was a little shocked because most experiences related to the health care industry don’t ever have a use for the word great. Being curious I asked why? Not to go into too much detail, his wife was admitted and had to stay for two days. The simple reason for the positivity was the nursing staff. They were pleasant, attentive and compassionate. Think about what those words mean. Isn’t that exactly what hospitals want their image to be? Isn’t that what they spend oodles of cash trying to do? Here it is, in a simple story that will be told to a handful of people, and there it ends.
Missed opportunity.
This story and untold others are social media gems. Nurses can be hospitals best PR representatives but what they do often goes untold and under appreciated. For hospitals to keep their public relations in good form, I think they should tell stories about their employees that touch the patients far more than anyone else. This would best be done with video. Doctors on camera are great, they can talk about procedures, technology and advances. Executives on camera are great, they can talk about direction, goals and culture. But nurses on camera can tell the stories that connect and reach people, they have the ability to hit on emotion and change attitudes. For some reason, I never see videos featuring nurses. It’s disappointing. There should be more resources put to finding these stories and telling them. The image improvement alone is worth the cost.
One day of pre-production to develop the story, one day of video production to capture it and a couple days of video editing would be all that is needed. They could churn out a few stories a month and who knows what could come from the publicity. If nothing else, nurses might get treated better by the public, and I think we all know that is a worthy cause.
As a video professional, I don’t know why these types of videos are so rare to find. I’m waiting for someone in charge of marketing to take a chance and hit a home run. Social Media videos can make a difference, but they need an honest effort put behind them.