Doctors and journalists often have a love-hate relationship. Community-based and national newspaper, radio, TV, and Web site reporters call on doctors as expert sources for health-related articles and news segments.
“Community-based and national newspaper, radio, TV, and Web site reporters call on doctors as expert sources for health-related articles and news segments.”
-Aniruddha Malpani, MD, medical director of Malpani Infertility Clinic in Mumbai, India
Doctors can provide information about new medical advances and technology; advice on treatments and preventive care; and general medical facts and background. This type of guidance allows journalists to present stories about health to their readers with greater detail and in the right context.
When you work with the local media in your community, you:
- inform your patients and other community members about important health topics
- help ensure that accurate health information is disseminated
- establish yourself as a subject matter expert in the community regarding medical issues, which ultimately can serve as a means of building your medical practice.
Foster a positive working relationship
Savvy doctors know that dealing with the press can be a double-edged sword: while a positive article can be very good for your reputation, a negative story can create an enormous amount of harm.
Therefore, it’s important to establish positive working relationships with journalists in your community so that you can make sure that the health articles for which you are interviewed are reported objectively, fairly, and accurately. Some ways to do that include...
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