Interning at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

by Breanna Reffel

I had the privilege of interning for one of the top 10 hospitals in the nation, ranked in 10 specialties by U.S. News and World Report: The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. I specifically worked in the College of Medicine, ranked 14 in the nation.

I managed a start-up institution specializing in design thinking, innovation and commercialization of new healthcare products and solutions called the IDEA Studio for Healthcare and Design. It hosts a national healthcare conference every year, and I was in charge of the marketing. As a project manager, I did a whole laundry list of tasks. My first month or so, I wrote and wrote and wrote some more. By the end of my first month, I had finished a marketing plan, social media plan, blog editorial calendar and a Twitter for business justification proposal.

Towards the halfway point of my internship, the writing slowed down, and I started implementing tactics for my plans. Some of my tactics included email blast to entire OSUWMC faculty and staff, social media, intranet campaigns and blog updates. The email blasts that I wrote are actually quite an important job because these emails are sent out through the CEO’s email. I wrote these emails as Dr. Gabbe and signed them as him, so I had to be extra professional and careful with my writing.

Throughout the summer, I also helped the media relations department by sending external press releases and media escorting. I even had a photographer use me as a test subject.

My writing classes and PR Tactics class helped me the most that summer. All the event planning assignments that Michele Ewing had us write helped tremendously. I was well schooled in plan-writing after Tactics.

My advice for younger PR students is volunteer yourself for everything and just talk to people. By talking to other MARCOM professionals at OSUWMC, I got invited to sit in on athletics meetings and help out with sports medicine events that had OSU football players attending. Don’t be afraid to go above and beyond just the office work.

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